> COVID made spending time outdoors/around other people an actual physical danger for over a year, and the psychological effects of that are lingering.
It actually never stopped being a physical danger. The only thing that changed is how long it takes for the damage to unfold.
At the start of COVID, people were rightfully shocked that hospitals and morgues were overflowing, and they reacted accordingly. That's no longer an issue (for now) with these latest strains, but acquiring Long COVID and dealing with its effects is definitely still a real concern.
Long COVID is vastly underdiagnosed. You might not get it until your 4th/5th/6th re-infection. That reinfection might also be asymptomatic, and/or Long COVID doesn't set in until weeks or months afterward, meaning people often don't link the two events. People not taking precautions (majority) are getting re-infected on average once per year since immunity from a previous infection typically wanes after 6 months, and there are about two waves per year for any given area.
Vaccines are of limited utility since they don't prevent transmission. A consistently worn N95 in public spaces is the only reliable means of defense, and everybody in your household needs to do that in public for it to be effective within your household.
We still know so little about Long COVID. For all we know, it's just going to be the next (or contemporary) microplastics debate where we just have to live with it until we start really seeing long term effects. But since it's not affecting our ability to make the rich richer, we won't get much serious mainstream support for the issue. Instead focusing on diligent work in labs in the background.
All that said: I don't do it myself, but I don't judge people who choose to mask up regularly when going out in public. It's a semi-normal thing in Asian communities, and I have two close (non-Asian) friends who do it. If nothing else, COVID de-stigmatized that practice here in the US.
As somebody who masks regularly in 2026, I definitely don't judge people who don't. Most people don't know the true risks, and even for those who do, the two lifestyles come with some important tradeoffs that I don't think should be forced on anybody, one way or the other.
I’ve only ever heard people talk about Long Covid online, I’ve never met a single person in real life that has ever claimed to have it or has any of the supposed symptoms. Everyone has been infected 1 or more times at this point. If I was never online I wouldn’t even know it existed and I honestly don’t think it does exist.
I’m not a Covid denier or anything either. I masked up and stayed in during the pandemic, I got the vaccine, etc. I had original first year Covid confirmed by a test, and I’m positive I’ve had it at least once again since then though didn’t get a test confirmation, so I’m 100% positive Covid is real (I feel like this is an obvious statement but I’m sure some people out there believe it’s a hoax or something). However I’ve seen exactly zero evidence other than online anecdotes that Long Covid exists or ever existed.
If it’s “vastly under diagnosed” I should personally know multiple people with it and should likely have family members with it (at least extended family) and yet I don’t. Not a single person. Honestly I think it’s one of those terminally online things that gets repeated a lot but only online.
I have a friend who had to stop his career and move back in with his parents in his 30s. After an infection he was suddenly unable to read or do anything that requires visual fixation without intense pain. It took years to find a doctor that was able to help him at all and he's still not back to normal.
This is an online anecdote so it will make no difference to you if you keep choosing not to believe it. But the idea that it is a purely online phenomenon with no real-world basis is absurd. It's been 6 years and there is a preponderance of evidence. The most common estimate is that it affects 400 million people worldwide.[1] Whether or not people want to talk about this to you in person is a completely different story. Covid is a societal red line that no one wants to bring up.
Why did you friend assume it was the Covid and not some other issue? How did the doctor help him?
That 400 million number is BS though. Here is the methodology:
> After acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, an estimated 400 million people globally and 17 million, or 6.8% of Americans, based on Household Pulse Survey, experienced Long COVID symptoms, such as fatigue, cognitive impairment, body pain, headache, dizziness, sleep disturbance and a myriad of other symptoms and signs spanning multiple body systems [1, 2]
They surveyed people after the biggest societal disruption in 50 years and found some of them were tired.
This is why people don’t take long COVID seriously. It’s just a catch-all for feeling off.
Post-viral syndrome is a thing common to most (all?) viral infections. For example, I got pretty sick in 2014 with some strange illness, maybe it was a bad flu or perhaps mono. Then for the next few months it'd seemingly resurface and cause little flare-ups of fatigue, nausea and a vague malaise. Just as it seemed to be fading I went on a lengthy post-college trip I around Asia where I'd spend multiple days a week feeling completely at ease hiking all day and partying all night but also had completely random days where I swore I felt like I was coming down with a flu and the littlest things would get my heart to race. When I came home the docs said it seemed like some sort of post-viral reaction then it resolved itself shortly thereafter. Covid doesn't seem to have been special other than that it gets tons of scrutiny and everyone got to experience it at once. Sometimes an overactive immune system will react in a counterproductive way and take a long time to get back to baseline, much like an army regiment that never got word that the war is over.
I actually do know someone irl who got long covid and became significantly disabled. He has to use an electric wheelchair to get around now. It’s a serious situation
A former IRL colleague had long covid issues including hospital stays. They posted about it for a stretch on Twitter but generally didn't talk about it, and then almost everyone I know through Twitter dispersed. Then there are a few people who I only know online but their symptoms are more 'months of brain fog' than being stuck at home or catatonic. So there might be more cases in your network where people are just not vocal about it.
Part of the issue is it's unclear what long covid is, if it's the same thing as chronic fatigue syndrome, and who even knows enough about this to be worth listening to
It's just another post-acute infection syndrome that can occur from pretty much any contagious illness (flu, etc.). Most people reading this have probably experienced this. Ever had a cough that persisted multiple weeks after the rest of your illness went away? That's not because your cold permanently damaged your lungs or even that the virus is still around. It's because your immune system will sometimes get confused and continue to wage war in your throat (or whatever it thought was infected) long after the virus has been eliminated.
After the shots (2x moderna, 1x pfizer) I was quite f'ed up for a long time. It took maybe a year until my physical endurance started coming back towards normal, my sweat was no longer smelling like after a bad flu.
The one or two Covid infections I had after that also weren't great.
I can totally believe that if you aren't a super healthy person that Covid can cause long termish problems in some that take a long time to fix.
There are doctors who have all those patients, and I don't think they spend all day just making it up.
> I’ve only ever heard people talk about Long Covid online, I’ve never met a single person in real life that has ever claimed to have it or has any of the supposed symptoms.
Probably for the aforementioned reasons: people aren't making the link.
Long COVID can lead to major bodily dysfunctions including heart disease, stroke, kidney impairment, neurological issues, autoimmune conditions, etc.
People are getting sick more often and not just with COVID, because recurring COVID infections have nuked their immune systems. There are studies proving how it impacts T-cell depletion, etc.
> If it’s “vastly under diagnosed” I should personally know multiple people with it
Are you not aware of your blatant contradiction here?
I'll take you seriously when I see scientists and doctors masking up and taking the precautions that you COVID truthers still cling to. Go to an infectious disease conference. They don't look like people who think like you.
You'd be surprised how many doctors and scientists would drink, smoke, and use other drugs in spite of being fully versed in what this does to their patients.
Or how many medical professionals continue to be medical professionals while knowing it has an elevated risk of suicide.
It's not hard to find the science backing my claims. As for why doctors don't mask, they're humans too, and just as susceptible to propaganda and competing forces like wanting to "return to normal" or simply having kids in school and assuming getting them to mask is too tall of an order (frankly, it is imo).
Here's a Canadian researcher who still masks and explains how the many 'mistakes' were made in order to convince people to throw caution to the wind:
But that didn't make the threat go away. People just pretended that it did. Group psychology is weird like that. Further compounding matters is the fact that neverending COVID reinfections impacts the part of the brain responsible for executive function, making it that much easier for people to not care. The more common and palatable term is "brain fog." Toxoplasmosis has a similar known reinforcing effect.
Life is a set of tradeoffs. The actual occurrence of Long Covid (which can also occur with influenza and other infections) is rare.
My personal calculation is the reward of enhanced expressiveness when interacting with others is worth the risk of infectious disease in 2026. In 2020, the variables were different!
> The actual occurrence of Long Covid (which can also occur with influenza and other infections) is rare.
Again, it's undercounted. Furthermore, LC is more comparable to AIDS than it is run of the mill influenza in the systems it affects and how. Also, note it took years of denial and lag before people finally acknowledged the long-term damage that AIDS caused. Except here it's not sexually transmitted but instead airborne year round.
Anyway, do you what want. I'm just pointing out most people have been misled, so they can't even make informed decisions. People with LC live with this regret.
Looking at credible sources, it appears that long covid occurs at rates around 1 in 20 to 1 in 30, which is high. It's rational for people who have elevated risk factors to avoid under-ventilated / unmasked gatherings.
This statistic doesn't match what's published, but I am not an authority and don't have the expertise to critically evaluate published studies on the topic.
The fun thing about science is that it’s not hard to find science backing X claim, and one can keep going on about that, while ignoring all the science backing not X claim.
Yeah that’s the fun thing about science, you can pretend to address things too. Seriously though, there is no way I am trusting some random researcher making a youtube video…like what is that. I am a researcher and I can make nonsense youtube videos about things too and throw some science flair around it for good measure.
It actually never stopped being a physical danger. The only thing that changed is how long it takes for the damage to unfold.
At the start of COVID, people were rightfully shocked that hospitals and morgues were overflowing, and they reacted accordingly. That's no longer an issue (for now) with these latest strains, but acquiring Long COVID and dealing with its effects is definitely still a real concern.
Long COVID is vastly underdiagnosed. You might not get it until your 4th/5th/6th re-infection. That reinfection might also be asymptomatic, and/or Long COVID doesn't set in until weeks or months afterward, meaning people often don't link the two events. People not taking precautions (majority) are getting re-infected on average once per year since immunity from a previous infection typically wanes after 6 months, and there are about two waves per year for any given area.
Vaccines are of limited utility since they don't prevent transmission. A consistently worn N95 in public spaces is the only reliable means of defense, and everybody in your household needs to do that in public for it to be effective within your household.