Long COVID remains a mystery. We don’t know what causes it, how to treat it, and why some people recover while others don’t.
But there are a lot of scientists working to answer those questions. As soon as COVID-19 was detected, the medical community switched into high gear: rapid tests were developed within weeks and vaccines were developed within a year. The rest of us learned how to recognize it (fever, fatigue) and how to avoid it (masks, social distancing). The pandemic response was far from perfect, but we knew the general shape of the disease: you got sick and you hoped to get better.
Except that many people didn’t get better.
Over a year into the pandemic, many researchers have shifted their focus from acute COVID-19 to “long COVID,” the phenomenon where people continue to have symptoms after the infection has gone.
