I think that's pretty much the accepted explanation in the medical field? A small percentage of people have always been getting autoimmune and other disorders after a virus infection. With Covid it's just become a lot more obvious given the volume.

The way Covid makes the immune system cause irreparable lung scarring that then sticks with people for the rest of their life also probably compounds other problems.

Post viral symptoms aren’t new. They don’t happen in the prevalence that people claim long COVID at.

Yes, probably.

One thing is really different though : I had the flu (the real one) once in my life. I had covid at least twice (the third time I didn't bother getting checked) I as many years.

That’s where my thoughts have been leading, too. I remember when people used almost the same kind of condescending tone dismissing myalgic encephalomyelitis as “Incline Village yuppie syndrome” until the weight of evidence won out. I think we’re sort of primed for it with the combination of hard-to-diagnose symptoms and various cultural tropes about whingers, disability cheats, etc. — if it caused unambiguous problems (e.g. polio’s paralysis or when COVID causes lung scarring visible on X-rays) almost everyone would accept that it was real without arguing but when you have the combination of relatively low incidence and things which aren’t easy to find on a simple test, it’s just a bit too easy to dismiss. I suspect the continuing improvements in diagnostic technology are going to push out the upper bounds for how long a case of many diseases can linger.

There’s probably also some link to the reminder of our own mortality & the degree to which luck matters: a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of disability and want to believe they have more agency than they do.

Yes, to an extent. But many people are reporting symptoms like anxiety, depression, or brain fog, which, while could be caused by the virus, could also be caused by the pandemic. Fear, isolation, lack of social interactions can cause detrimental damage, and this should not be overlooked.