Right, and we should definitely not assume long-COVID exists without compelling, reproducible evidence. Much policy around COVID is now based on the assumption that long-COVID is a significant public health threat and justifies extremely heavy handed and disruptive interventions and policies, respectively.

This is despite no large randomized controlled studies proving that it is exists as a widespread phenemenon, and nothing in the pathophysiology of COVID to suggest it would create the kind of pervasiveness of long-term complications that many media stories have sounded the alarm about.