A number of recent studies have investigated whether "long COVID" symptoms are more strongly correlated to a belief that you had COVID or to you actually having

A number of recent studies have investigated whether "long COVID" symptoms are more strongly correlated to a belief that you had COVID or to you actually having COVID. The basic answer seems to be that "Long COVID" is entirely an aftereffect of thinking you had COVID, and it (mostly) doesn't matter whether the patient was actually infected.