Paul Offit had some ideas about this in a recent interview: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/936937 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/936937 > [Eric Top

Paul Offit had some ideas about this in a recent interview: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/936937 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/936937 > [Eric Topol]: Moreover, there are a lot of things that we still don't understand. Like, for example, "long COVID." What is your sense about long COVID? > Offit: You're referring to people reporting long-lasting symptoms, such as depression, joint pain, low-grade fever? > Topol: Right. Joint pain, brain fog, chest discomfort, difficulty breathing, very poor exercise tolerance, some that has been continuing since acute infections in March. For some people, it is still going on and very disabling. But it seems to affect an unknown percent of people. > Offit: I think it's probably a reflection of a couple of things. In part it is probably because of the vasculitis which is causing damage in a variety of organs, and that can be chronic. Scarring of the lung can be somewhat disabling. I think we'll learn about that over time. > Then there may be an ICU psychosis associated with this; for patients who are in the ICU for a long time, when they come out of it, there's a sort of brain fog, or depression, which may be part of this. So I think there may be overlapping things going on. > I think it's real. I don't think it's just something people are making up. I think this is a real problem. We'll learn about it as we gather more information on this virus. (Offit's expertise is of course in vaccines and not management of COVID-19 - this was just an aside in an interview that was mostly about the timeline and success criteria for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.)