I put long COVID in the same bucket at long Lyme, which doesn't actually exist. It's a pretext for hypochondria, not a legitimate basis for public policy.
While I don't doubt that such psychosomatic disorders exist, there is simply not enough data yet to make such a strong statement. There are numerous reports of people not recovering their sense of taste / smell months after catching COVID, on top of all of the hospitalized people reporting symptoms long first catching it. It's not like there isn't legitimate evidence of this: https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/. Obviously, it'll take a lot of time and care to sort out the effect that the lockdowns / hospitalization have vs. just the disease itself, and it's entirely possible that the mental effects of the lockdown play a large role in these prolonged recoveries.
But still, it's a novel, deadly disease which has a significant impact on the respiratory system (and perhaps the vascular system as well). The human body and our immune system are incredibly complex. It's far too reductive to categorize all of these collective experiences as just "hypochondria".
