Abstract Long COVID, as currently defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other authorities, is a symptomatic condition that has been shown to affect an estimated 10-30% of non-hospitalized patients after one infection. However, COVID-19 can also cause organ damage in individuals without symptoms, who would not fall under the current definition of Long COVID. This organ damage, whether symptomatic or not, can lead to various health impacts such as heart attacks and strokes. Given these observations, it is necessary to either expand the definition of Long COVID to include organ damage or recognize COVID-19-induced organ damage as a distinct condition affecting many symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals after COVID-19 infections. It is important to consider that many known adverse health outcomes, including heart conditions and cancers, can be asymptomatic until harm thresholds are reached. Many more medical conditions can be identified by testing than those that are recognized through reported symptoms. It is therefore important to similarly recognize that while Long COVID symptoms are associated with organ damage, there are many individuals that have organ damage without displaying recognized symptoms and to include this harm in the characterization of COVID-19 and in the monitoring of individuals after COVID-19 infections. https://whn.global/scientific/spect...ptomatic-organ-damage-to-long-covid-syndrome/
Well, authors of this paper, you're in luck: it always did! It was defined as broadly as possible to include all health impacts of a COVID infection. However the expectation was that medicine would take it from there and make it less broad and more refined. That sadly did not happen, and much nonsense was said to confuse the issue. Especially since doing that means recognizing the various chronic illnesses that medicine has long denied and covered up, so that effort is explicitly being impaired by a 19th century belief system of medical mythology and plenty of hubris. That we did not expect. But the definition always included that. However that definition was bastardized many times and lost some of that meaning. But I guess you can say: job done? Damn it's easy to do a thing that other people already did.
