> “We were surprised by how strongly psychological distress before a COVID-19 infection was associated with an increased risk of long COVID,” said Siwen Wang, a researcher in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard Chan School who led the study. “Distress was more strongly associated with developing long COVID than physical health risk factors such as obesity, asthma, and hypertension.”
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an...
I myself had a lot of breathing issues for a week or two after I had it, took me a month to get back into the swing of the gym.
That being said, I've never seen anyone hit hard for more than a week or two. So I don't really know what to think here, but I have noticed that interest groups seem hellbent on riding this disease all the way into big funding grants and political power.
As one anecdotal data point: I'm 29, and was a previously fit (would regularly play sport, go for long hikes / bikes rides, etc), and I haven't been able to recover that fitness nearly 3 years later. I was not expecting this (I had covid early on in April 2020 before there was much talk of long covid), but I found that my endurance was greatly reduced post infection (I essentially get the same fatigue that anyone would get once they've completely exhausted themselves through strenuous exercise, just much, much quicker and with exercise that shouldn't be exhausting me). And when I have tried to push myself to regain fitness made those symptoms worse not better (after pushing myself, I could barely get out of bed for a couple of days - I've tried this 2 or 3 times).
I'm lucky in that I can still do every day tasks (work, shopping, etc) just fine. Some people with more extreme symptoms can't even manage that.