It's not clear just how many people have suffered from symptoms of long COVID. Estimates vary widely from study to study, often because the definition of long COVID itself varies. But even using the more conservative estimates would still mean that millions of people have likely developed the condition after being infected. For some, the lingering symptoms are worse than the initial bout of COVID-19. Others, like Rick, were on death's door and have just had more of a rollercoaster of recovery than you'd otherwise expect. He had brain fog, fatigue and depression. He'd start getting his energy back, then try some light yard work and end up in the hospital with pneumonia. It wasn't clear which ailments were a result of being on a ventilator so long and which were due to what was still a new, mysterious condition called long COVID. "I was wanting to go to work four months after I got home," Rick says over the laughter of his wife and primary caregiver, Cinde Lucas. "I said, 'you know what, just get up and go. You can't drive. You can't walk. But go in for an interview. Let's see how that works,'" she recalls. Rick did get back to work, eventually. Earlier this year, he started taking short-term assignments in his old field as a nursing home administrator, but he's still on partial disability. There's no telling why Lucas has mostly recovered and so many haven't shaken their symptoms, even years later. What treatments work, and what recovery looks like, is unique to each long COVID patient. "There is absolutely nothing anywhere that's clear about long COVID," says Dr. Steven Deeks, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. "We have a guess at how frequently it happens. But right now, everyone's in a data-free zone." | 
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