I'm curious about how much of this will be unique to COVID-19. A friend of mine has long covid, with substantially reduced energy and all that, which was severe for over 6 months after he got out of the hospital... on oxygen for 4 weeks.

Any severe infection or injury is going to have various long-term effects, and we already know that many viruses can cause a lot of these knock on effects.

This isn't to minimize the effects of covid, but rather to advise that we shouldn't be dismissing the next pandemic just because it's not killing people in the short term. Balancing short term pain for society against millions of people with lifelong effects from the disease is difficult, but there has to be one.