FWIW the researchers acknowledged this in the cited paper: > because stress/anxiety is a symptom that many persons may be experiencing due to the pandemic, and

FWIW the researchers acknowledged this in the cited paper: > because stress/anxiety is a symptom that many persons may be experiencing due to the pandemic, and not due to COVID-19 per se, we quantified the number of individuals who experienced stress/anxiety as their only symptom > We found that only 6 participants reported stress/anxiety as their sole symptom, demonstrating that our PASC prevalence is not driven by this non-specific symptom. That said, completely agree that the study is fairly low quality and has many confounding factors, see my other responses here for further commentary.