I have a friend who had to stop his career and move back in with his parents in his 30s. After an infection he was suddenly unable to read or do anything that requires visual fixation without intense pain. It took years to find a doctor that was able to help him at all and he's still not back to normal. This is an online anecdote so it will make no difference to you if you keep choosing not to believe it. But the idea that it is a purely online phenomenon with no real-world basis is absurd. It's been 6 years and there is a preponderance of evidence. The most common estimate is that it affects 400 million people worldwide.[1] Whether or not people want to talk about this to you in person is a completely different story. Covid is a societal red line that no one wants to bring up.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/ooim/article/6/1/iqaf010/8379704?lo...

Post-viral syndrome is a thing common to most (all?) viral infections. For example, I got pretty sick in 2014 with some strange illness, maybe it was a bad flu or perhaps mono. Then for the next few months it'd seemingly resurface and cause little flare-ups of fatigue, nausea and a vague malaise. Just as it seemed to be fading I went on a lengthy post-college trip I around Asia where I'd spend multiple days a week feeling completely at ease hiking all day and partying all night but also had completely random days where I swore I felt like I was coming down with a flu and the littlest things would get my heart to race. When I came home the docs said it seemed like some sort of post-viral reaction then it resolved itself shortly thereafter. Covid doesn't seem to have been special other than that it gets tons of scrutiny and everyone got to experience it at once. Sometimes an overactive immune system will react in a counterproductive way and take a long time to get back to baseline, much like an army regiment that never got word that the war is over.

I actually do know someone irl who got long covid and became significantly disabled. He has to use an electric wheelchair to get around now. It’s a serious situation

A former IRL colleague had long covid issues including hospital stays. They posted about it for a stretch on Twitter but generally didn't talk about it, and then almost everyone I know through Twitter dispersed. Then there are a few people who I only know online but their symptoms are more 'months of brain fog' than being stuck at home or catatonic. So there might be more cases in your network where people are just not vocal about it.

Part of the issue is it's unclear what long covid is, if it's the same thing as chronic fatigue syndrome, and who even knows enough about this to be worth listening to

> I’ve only ever heard people talk about Long Covid online, I’ve never met a single person in real life that has ever claimed to have it or has any of the supposed symptoms.

Probably for the aforementioned reasons: people aren't making the link.

Long COVID can lead to major bodily dysfunctions including heart disease, stroke, kidney impairment, neurological issues, autoimmune conditions, etc.

People are getting sick more often and not just with COVID, because recurring COVID infections have nuked their immune systems. There are studies proving how it impacts T-cell depletion, etc.

> If it’s “vastly under diagnosed” I should personally know multiple people with it

Are you not aware of your blatant contradiction here?

I appreciate that.

As somebody who masks regularly in 2026, I definitely don't judge people who don't. Most people don't know the true risks, and even for those who do, the two lifestyles come with some important tradeoffs that I don't think should be forced on anybody, one way or the other.

You'd be surprised how many doctors and scientists would drink, smoke, and use other drugs in spite of being fully versed in what this does to their patients.

Or how many medical professionals continue to be medical professionals while knowing it has an elevated risk of suicide.

It's not hard to find the science backing my claims. As for why doctors don't mask, they're humans too, and just as susceptible to propaganda and competing forces like wanting to "return to normal" or simply having kids in school and assuming getting them to mask is too tall of an order (frankly, it is imo).

Here's a Canadian researcher who still masks and explains how the many 'mistakes' were made in order to convince people to throw caution to the wind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCft7qu1Iv4

For the US version, this is a decent timeline of events:

https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...

The best part was after that extended disinformation campaign, lawmakers asked people what they wanted to do, then told them what they wanted to hear:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.hous...

But that didn't make the threat go away. People just pretended that it did. Group psychology is weird like that. Further compounding matters is the fact that neverending COVID reinfections impacts the part of the brain responsible for executive function, making it that much easier for people to not care. The more common and palatable term is "brain fog." Toxoplasmosis has a similar known reinforcing effect.