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Comment by zero_shift | Hacker News Reader

Is it that we over-diagnose long COVID? Or that we under-diagnose post viral fatigue more generally?

I remember a close family member having a nasty viral infection aged 32/33 - not exactly old and frail - and they left it a very different person in terms of energy and general health. It really did take a year or so to clear up.

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The evidence seems to suggest that people often get sick without a clear cause, and due to widespread fear about COVID, the sickness is often being misattributed to long COVID when that happens.

We over diagnose. It's taboo to discuss the fact that population is tumblr/twitter types, and not people that are well adjusted. It's a contagion, but it's not spread by a virus. Most people with Long COVID recover through increased exercise and improved diet. They're just depressed, which is of course a real illness, but it's more to do with burn out from social media hysteria.

Any mention of this on HN results in immediate downvote brigade.

You get down voted because there are thousands of people suffering from real physical symptoms of this - like clots and tachycardia - and you are waving away the symptoms as a mental illness.

What a joke; I hope no one ever does that to you.

Should we not be Trusting the Science? This paper is The Science.

You aren't wrong, but "the science" figured out that Epstein-Barr was connected to multiple sclerosis _last year_. Maybe some skepticism that things aren't settled is warranted - especially with something so new.

> real physical symptoms of this - like clots and tachycardia

I think what GP was talking about when saying overdiagnoses was LC diagnoses where no physical symptoms are present.

"It can't be depression because my wife has it. You need to do more research, please subscribe to doomerist facebook groups to read all about it."

We've both been downvoted to oblivion, which at this point means we're right. COVID really broke a lot of people mentally

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