You know a 1000 people who will personally tell you if they have a disorder that’s to begin with hard to diagnose and to make worse also hotly debated as even existing at all?

Given everything going against it, if two people actually have told you they have long Covid, what do you reckon the real number is?

I know several dozen people. One person who is still unable to work after COVID in late 2021, and a fair amount of people, myself included, whose condition substantially worsened for indeterminate reason during the last few years.

Most likely, the majority of people who are damaged by COVID aren't cases severe enough to label as "long COVID", and often just passed off as having become more depressed due to social distancing, etc. except they then don't recover with lifestyle improvement.

I suppose there are business connections among those 1000+, and I have a policy of never telling a business contact anything about my health (except "I'm on sick leave", if necessary). I suppose I'm not the only on doing that, so you most likely underestimate the occurrences.

I know a couple people in their 30’s struggling with long covid. One of them is a startup founder in SF and now has long covid and it’s been really terrible for them and their family. We speak often about it because I was out of work for months unable to function due to intense neurological inflammation. It greatly exacerbated what used to be a mild auto immune condition and I’m still traveling the country to get medical help and working from bed most days.

How would you know? How many in your extended network have Crohn's? Hashimoto's? Diabetes?

A lot of people with long covid don't realize there's a common syndrome for their symptoms. And of those who do know, most people don't broadcast their experiences with a long-term disability.

Significant numbers of my network have SOME kind of reported issues long after infection. Most common is respiratory issues – reduced lung capacity, difficulty breathing, running out of breath more quickly during exercise, etc. That's not to say any of these are official diagnoses, but we still know relatively little about the long term effects of COVID.

Yes, I know of friends and coworkers who have had to change career because they couldn't do their old job anymore. This after a year long recovery. They aren't happy about it, they really want to do their old job, if only they could. Then there are a few more who where home sick for 1 or 2 months. They all seem to have recovered.

Most people don't overshare.

People suffering from long covid certainly have a different experience. There's a range from "things smelled differently for a few months" to "I'm now functionally disabled due to fatigue". But without biomarkers that say you have this thing, it just looks like you're being lazy. So why would anybody tell you they have it and be judged?

I bet you don’t hear from many people who don’t want to disclose their health too or are afraid of their livelihood doing so.

My network is substantially smaller and I know 2 and I know of (partners/close friends of people I know) 2 more.