It seems more likely that the significant lockdowns and deep isolation that came with it had these same effects. When you can't see friends for months, can't do anything but stay home and watch tv/play video games, and are constantly exposed to news of a depressing, ill world - what else do you feel?

You don't need covid to feel "Long Covid" after the life we've lived in the last 2 years.

That's testable. It should be possible to compare the rate of "long covid" issues between people who tested positive for covid at some point, and people who didn't. Break it down by area so you're comparing populations with the same isolation rules.

This would be an especially good comparison since it's unlikely that people who caught covid were more isolated on average.

And even if they did, that doesn't mean covid didn't physically cause it. HIV for example can cause depression by physically damaging the brain.

https://www.health.com/condition/depression/conditions-linke...

I guess if I had to watch family members and friends die via a video chat, or not being able to visit or hold their handle in their last moments? Or you know attend a funeral.

Nope can't see that leading to depression. Everything is fine.

The problem is that it also seems highly unlikely that a respiratory disease that primarily attacks lungs, results in long-term depression.

Whataever physiological connection exists there, is far from obvious. And I haven’t found concrete studies to explain it.

Covid is not just a respiratory disease. It can affect "the heart, kidneys, skin and brain. Inflammation and problems with the immune system can also happen," according to Mayo Clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...

They're mainly talking about severe cases, but it doesn't seem that unlikely that it could also have more mild effects to those organs.

This article is about Long Covid, so in a sense this is circular evidence.

Nonetheless, the two qualifiers in the statement "People who had severe illness with COVID-19 might experience organ damage affecting the heart, kidneys, skin and brain" weakens the argument. If the long-covid issue was just that people who were in ICU then had long-term symptoms, that's an easy premise to understand. But IMHO, for mild symptoms, there's a non-obvious leap to say that long-term brain damage somehow occurred.

"A large study comparing brain scans from the same individuals before and after SARS-CoV-2 infection suggests that brain changes could be a lingering outcome of even mild COVID-19."

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2790595

Very early on, I came to the conclusion that COVID is a blood disease, and subsequent findings (especially about effects on the epithelium) have generally backed that up. That means it's capable of affecting practically any organ, including the brain and various hormone-producing glands, so the myriad symptoms associated with Long COVID aren't that surprising.

More recently, I've seen some scientific back-and-forth about whether Long COVID is novel or just a form of already-known post-viral syndrome. I sort of feel like it doesn't matter. Even if it is "just" post-viral syndrome, it seems to be particularly severe and widespread. Whichever theory turns out to be correct (including the "just depression" theory), the empirical fact of Long COVID's existence has more to do with my continued caution than any fear of acute COVID. Getting older has been and will continue to be "fun" enough without that.

It doesn't primarily attack lungs. It's novel, so it hasn't evolved a particular favourite target. It attacks everything. If you really want to hang a sign on it, a large number of symptoms are repercussions of vascular damage (in the lungs, brain, kidneys, etc). Many are arguing that Covid is far more a vascular problem than a lung ailment.

A lot of people were severely negatively affected by the world's reaction to the pandemic. Businesses closed, jobs lost, financial insecurity, etc. Surely this could have an impact on the collective mental health.