With a "normal" viral cough, the infection itself lasts that long. With Long Covid, the viral load is gone from your system, and symptoms still persist
Previously, the general public wasn't very interested in chronic, unspecific symptoms that people have or had (google Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; it's a collection of people feeling fatigue, have concentration issues etc. similar to Long Covid, many long before COVID-19 was a thing). With Covid, there are too many to ignore, so such things are now getting more attention.
> With Covid, there are too many to ignore, so such things are now getting more attention.
Too many to ignore or just that we decided to put a huge magnifying glass on it? We have our log levels turned up to "ultra verbose" and are collecting every single scrap of data. If we looked at other respiratory viruses with the same amount of logging... I would bet we'd see just as much, if not more, crap as we are with covid. Never has a respiratory virus been followed this closely.
Except that Post-Viral Syndrome has been a thing since before Covid:
> Post-viral syndrome, or post-viral fatigue, refers to a sense of tiredness and weakness that lingers after a person has fought off a viral infection. It can arise even after common infections, such as the flu.
My friend was diagnosed with ME/CFS after a stroke at age 27. The term "myalgic encephalitis" is the preferred term, as I understand it, because the public seems to be unable to take a phrase like "chronic fatigue syndrome" seriously. In America at least, our puritan personality insists that "fatigue" is a sign of laziness.
If there's an upside to Covid-19, I hope that it's that the symptoms of ME/CFS are taken more seriously by the public and scientific community, and that the results of further research on "long covid" are transferrable.
Those here who are experiencing Long Covid symptoms should keep an eye on a drug called Ampligen. It is the first and only drug that has been approved for the treatment of ME/CFS, but thus far only in Argentina. There are a couple ongoing studies in the United States (one in Lake Tahoe), but no FDA approval yet. Recently, Ampligen has been put into trials for the treatment of Long Covid as well.
Previously, the general public wasn't very interested in chronic, unspecific symptoms that people have or had (google Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; it's a collection of people feeling fatigue, have concentration issues etc. similar to Long Covid, many long before COVID-19 was a thing). With Covid, there are too many to ignore, so such things are now getting more attention.