The Claim:
One Twitter sleuth thinks that because people only search for long-COVID in English-speaking countries, the entire phenomenon is a fraud perpetrated among those who speak English.
The Facts:
There are numerous articles and papers from places like Japan, Sweden, Italy, and Brazil speaking about long COVID, so why then, might places that don’t speak English not search for the term “Long COVID”? It might just have to do with the fact that “Long COVID” is, well, an English term, and other languages have their own terms for the condition, ones they’d use when using a search engine to look up information about it. Fun fact: “Long Covid” in Spanish is “covid persistente”.
People who suffer from lingering symptoms after their recovery from COVID deserve to be taken seriously by people who understand that Long-COVID is real. It is thought that people may suffer from organ damage due to COVID leading to long-term and debilitating symptoms such as shortness of breath, brain fog, and fatigue. These symptoms don’t really care what language you speak.
Disclaimer: Science is always evolving and our understanding of these topics may have evolved too since this was originally posted. Be sure to check out our most recent posts and browse the latest Just the Facts Topics for the latest.
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