I had the pleasure of being contacted by Reuters Fact Check last week, with a demand that I explain and justify a headline on a story I wrote about COVID vaccines. I immediately started laughing.

Why?

Well, I should probably explain Reuters Fact Check first.

If the insanity over COVID wasn’t bad enough, we now have a new debate: long COVID. Yes, I know we’ve been discussing it for months. People exhibiting the initial symptoms of infection weeks, even months, after they’ve recovered from contracting the pathogen. And again, the media and the lockdown crew tried to weaponize it to keep us in fear. We, for the most part, no longer care. Concerts, sporting events, eating at restaurants—they’re all back and here to stay. The pandemic is over—stay home for those who can’t cope. 

Thousands of death certificates previously tallied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as COVID-19 fatalities were actually related to long COVID, the ongoing symptoms that some people struggle with for weeks, months or even years after their initial recovery from a coronavirus infection.

The new findings from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, published Wednesday, count at least 3,544 deaths involving long COVID through June 2022 — a number researchers say is likely an underestimate of the true toll.

An influential paper espousing the dangers of “long COVID” is now under investigation by the journal that published it.

The Jan. 2021 paper, titled “6-month consequences of COVID-19 in patients discharged from hospital: a cohort study,” has been cited more than 1,600 times and referenced multiple times by the World Health Organization, according to Retraction Watch. It was recently flagged with an “expression of concern” by editors of The Lancet, the prestigious medical journal that initially published the paper.

Long Covid is a chronic illness resulting from a Covid-19 infection. It goes by many names, including long-haul Covid, post-Covid or post-acute Covid syndrome.

Not much is yet known about the illness. Its symptoms number in the hundreds and can be debilitating. They can also be challenging to diagnose — for doctors even willing to do so.

Long Covid has affected as many as 23 million Americans. It may cost the U.S. economy $3.7 trillion, roughly that of the Great Recession, according to one estimate.