Long COVID, the unending pandemic

Abstract

Abstract The article explores the complexity and current uncertainties concerning long COVID, an emerging nosological entity with vague contours and characterised by unpredictable and persistent symptoms and absence of ‘objective diagnosis’. Based on accounts of the affected individuals and balancing the review of medical and journalistic literature on the subject, historical approach and ethnography, this work describes and analyses the policies of recognition and care of this condition in a context of epistemic injustice. The article contests the representations of long COVID as a merely transient disorder arguing that, unlike the promises of full recovery, what is taking shape is the emergence of a new individual whose biography is being rewritten by long COVID. For these people, full recognition of long COVID as a distinct pathological entity, coupled with the validation of their experimental knowledge, means more than merely opening concrete possibilities for relief from physical and mental suffering. It also represents justice, repair, and a further step towards the reconstruction of their lives.