I'm self-educated about Long Covid (because I've had Covid and when I looked up several of the symptoms I've had in the past 6 months or so--not expecting my previous Covid to be the source, hence no confirmation bias), Long Covid was the most rational explanation as a root cause.

Based on my inferences from reading peer-reviewed articles in traditionally respected medical journals (both summaries in other sources and occasionally the articles or abstracts themselves), I've come to the following hypotheses:

1. There is no single, uniform symptomatology to account for the effects of Long Covid. It's highly unlikely that if there were (hypothetically speaking) 10 primary symptoms of Long Covid, there would be no predictable pattern that could account for the symptoms in any individual "survivor" of Covid. (in my case persistent phlegm, anosmia, ageusia, fatigue, and brain fog are the most prevalent, with fatigue being more sporadic, phlegm being almost daily present, and ageusia being most frequent--though sporadic at times; I can smell more accurately than I can taste), and brain fog being hardest to pinpoint. Given the evolutionary nature of Covid, it would be rational to suspect various manifestations, not to mention complex comorbidities (and the influence of diet, environmental toxins, and other variables). But traditional medical research tends to search for a simple etiology of disease. If patient X exhibits symptoms 1, 3, and 7, but patient Y exhibits 2, 3, and 5, then they don't have the underlying disease, according to this viewpoint.

2. There will not necessarily be a single (even if multiform) treatment for all people suffering from the same root cause. We see this simplistic single-treatment approach leading to numerous contradictions in analyzing other diseases (e.g. dementia) and (famously) in prescriptions for the "ideal" or "most healthy" diet.

I think we need a multivariate, open-ended approach that is to traditional treatments what the Enigma machine was to simple substitution ciphers.

Of the research that I've seen so far, the starting point that Long Covid results from the immune system's mistaken attempt to fight infection, even when the infection is no longer present, makes the most sense as part of a multivariate approach. But I'm not a trained scientist, just skeptical in the way that the scientific method itself is skeptical.

The fact that a complex, multivariate approach is not as immediately profitable as a single, patentable pharmaceutical solution supports my skepticism. If the solution to Long Covid were "Eat more kale," we would have to wait for a study funded by the Kale Growers Association to be published in a "peer-reviewed" journal or two.