El Gato Malo

a challenge in assessing “long covid” is that psychosomatic illness is a real and prevalent issue as is generalized ill health. many feel themselves to be sick and to have general or non-specific symptoms of “brain fog” or “unwellness” or “low energy.”

this has been a longstanding feature of the public and such sufferers tend to gravitate to and ascribe their experienced illness to whatever is popular at present from chronic fatigue to fibromyalgia etc. thus, it would in no way be unexpected for such people to claim “long covid” as it is the non-specific malady currently in the press all the time and for which there is no clinical test to prove or exclude.

the question becomes, how can we separate these two competing (and non-mutually ex[l]cusive) hypotheses?