I think (hope?) we all agree that awareness of "long-covid" is important. But it's also entirely orthogonal to designations of a pathogen as being "over" or "not over".
Coronaviruses have been with humanity for a very long time, and people have been reporting post-infection syndromes surrounding them - and have been ignored or downplayed - for decades now.
There are five endemic coronaviruses, all of which likely started as an epidemic (two are documented of course) and evolved into what we call a "common cold", with susceptible populations suffering outsized effects.
Now that we've finally (and I think we can say, successfully) achieved endemic equilibrium from covid-19, it's important not to lose compassion for those still suffering (and to perhaps bring awareness online regarding this syndrome going back a long time - some have been suffering for many years).
We have not achieved equilibrium. There is wave after wave, and people are getting increasingly disabled. The virus continues to mutate but we have dropped our defenses.
Viruses become "mild" when they kill enough people for natural selection to take effect. That has not happened.
Selection is acting on viruses as well. A virus that makes you very ill won't spread as well as one that makes you a little ill because there are only so many people you can infect while bedridden, and the trend among dominant strains reflects this.
Selection acts on viruses far faster than on humans. And this effect is observable to the naked eye at the population level, with multiple powerful examples in living memory. The comment to which you are responding is borderline nonsense in this respect.
How on earth can selection pressure a virus that kills long after it transmits? When increased severity can sometimes improve transmission? This is 1800s transmission-virulence tradeoff hypothesis nonsense.
I think it's important because a lot of people still don't know what it entails.
For example, you say "cancer" and everyone has an idea of what that is. As of the 2000s/2010s, awareness has been rising about mental health and what it actually means to have mental illness. But if you say "long covid", most people still don't know what that really means to a sufferer of it. With its relative commonness compared to other, rarer yet more well-known illnesses (like DID), I'd say it deserves more attention than it gets.
If we think of public disease messaging as having limited "bandwidth", it makes sense to message about the most common, newest, and least understood diseases, wouldn't you agree?
The more the public understands what having an illness means for its sufferer, the more understanding the public will be of that person's needs and limitations, and thus the fuller a life that person will be able to live as their limitations are accommodated.
I think learning the specific names and details is a waste of time. That is important information for the patient and their doctor, but not the general public.
It doesnt add any value over the alternative of people having an unspecified chronic disease and requesting X accommodation, especially as accommodations needed or desired vary wildly
To your point, people know the word "cancer" but have no clue what it entails or what accommodations a specific person needs or wants.
People can march around raising cancer awareness, but it is also a pointless performative act for the benefit of the performer.
If you have a sick person in your life and want to be compassionate, figure out what accommodation they actually want or need.
Because most know someone that has had covid. Then still its not public knowledge it can be as debilitating as it is, even IQ loss and brain fog effect should be better understood by the public as well.
Plus its not well researched so we should at least be trying to get the symptoms that are proven out there so we can get more information on it
Well I don't think someone adapting to new disabilities or impairments should be punished for it. So if someone is getting PIP'd a few months after returning from covid and aren't performing, I think theres a lot of moral failings as a manager/owner/employer you can have if you don't take it into account.
Also, why is it wrong to want to provide grace to those dealing with it? Like suddenly losing IQ or getting a cognitive impairment is a huge part of someone's life, there are non-invasive and non-condescending ways to support them
