My wife who is more than 2 years sick with Long/Post Covid, lost almost everything because of it, her body and her brain. She had almost perfect memory and spoke 5 languages fluently by the age of 30 while learning Chinese as a 6th. She had a promising career in the medicine field and was also quite a good painter and other crafts (not famous though). We were hiking regularly to very high mountains and doing a lot of activities.
Now she spends most of the day in bed and the rest on the sofa and she can’t barely do anything, only crochet… maybe some cooking. Not even watch movies that have too much action, so she is watching black and white series now to have something to do without getting cognitively burnout. She lost her memory, her capacity to think, she has chronic fatigue and many other weird symptoms like easily getting senses overwhelmed by simple noises or smells.
We went to a lot of doctors, tried a few “remedies” from small scientific studies and internet: metformin, nicotine, lidocaine, multiple supplements and vitamins, some antivirals and many other things. Nobody is able to help her and most of doctors don’t even try to help or know anything about this new and growing condition.
Of course always the “psychosomatic” smart ass appears, but there are enough proofs already to tell them to shut up. Even the NIH director mentioned viral persistence found body tissues in a recent talk [1].
At least the awareness is growing and there are s lot of studies going on. So still some hope, but it won’t come fast.
[1] https://x.com/californiacodes/status/1780099073468764415