These are not the same at all. Actual studies on vaccines have showed that people didn't have the various conditions (eg autism) above the baseline level. On th

These are not the same at all. Actual studies on vaccines have showed that people didn't have the various conditions (eg autism) above the baseline level. On the other hand, studies of covid that include control groups have shown that some proportion of people have longer-lasting symptoms that do not appear in the control group. It's also my understanding that other viruses have been known to cause longer-lived effects as well, so this is not limited to SARS-CoV-2. It's totally true that you can't just go by an individual person's account of what happened to them, but I think the evidence for the existence of long COVID goes beyond that.