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I haven't seen any meaningful distinction between long-Covid and so called post-viral syndrome which is purported to occur after non-Covid coronavirus infections, with the same set of weird and inconsistent symptoms. Is there a legitimate reason for this apparent distinction?
People to believe in it/care.
How bad you're affected would seem to be something useful. A minor annoyance that you eventually get over that brings peak physical performance down a notch for a short time is a lot less interesting to the hundreds of millions of current and future covid sufferers than if it's debilitating requiring multiple weeks not working and being unable to function in basic ways.

I feel at one time long-covid was considered to be debilitating, something similar that you can shrug off, not long-covid.

The whole thing has become so fraught with hidden agenda that shifting definitions with an intent to mislead to score some points, garner interest & funding, serve political masters' interests, own the libs, bash those repub-anti-vaxxers, get more people to do "the right thing", or something else -- all seems so normal that we have to check every definition we thought we understood. Was I deceived (with the best possible motives, as always) before? Or is it now? Both? Neither is even still possible, but I have no confidence to assume it by default.

I suspect the #1 reason for wild covid misinformation is clickbait. Fear sells.
That is one of the main things this article is actually about.

"The fact that the symptoms occurred at a significantly higher rate in those recovering from COVID-19 vs influenza is important, as it implies that the cause of the symptoms is directly linked to SARS-CoV-2 infection, rather than a generic response to a viral infection."

To be honest though does it really matter? The fact is hundreds of millions of people have caught this disease and a large proportion of those have long term symptoms. Whether or not this is unique to Covid or just more common with Covid is really beside the point. It's still a major health care issue that we need to research and understand, and allow for in our planning to manage the impact. We don't have tens of millions of people with long term health impact from influenza, but we do from Covid.

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10% in Sweden. But it passes with time, and is not unique to SCoV2. Happens all the time with viruses.

Very weird that americans have so much higher rate. Is it because you´re fat?