Original article if you love paywalls: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/health/long-covid-symptoms-recovery.html

“Long Covid can impact people across the life span, from children to older adults, as well as across sex, gender, racial, ethnic and other demographic groups,” it said, concluding that “long Covid is associated with a wide range of new or worsening health conditions and encompasses more than 200 symptoms involving nearly every organ system.”

The report cited data from 2022 suggesting that nearly 18 million adults and nearly a million children in the United States have had long Covid at some point. At the time of that survey, about 8.9 million adults and 362,000 children had the condition.

Surveys showed that the prevalence of long Covid decreased in 2023 but, for unclear reasons, has risen this year. As of January, data showed nearly 7 percent of adults in the United States had long Covid.

“Long Covid can result in the inability to return to work (or school for children and adolescents), poor quality of life, diminished ability to perform activities of daily living, and decreased physical and cognitive function for six months to two years or longer,” the report said.

But, the report said, “even individuals with a mild initial course of illness can develop long Covid with severe health effects.” And “given the much higher number of people with mild versus severe disease, they make up the great majority of people with long Covid.”

“Long Covid appears to be a chronic illness, with few patients achieving full remission,” the report said.

I love living through a mass disabling event as a disabled person who feels like they wouldn’t be able to function if they got a new condition on top of the current ones! /s