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Welcome to Impact Factor, your weekly dose of commentary on a new medical study. I'm Dr F. Perry Wilson of the Yale School of Medicine.

I want to help people suffering from long COVID as much as anyone. But we have a real problem. In brief, we are being too inclusive. The first thing you learn, when you start studying the epidemiology of diseases, is that you need a good case definition. And our case definition for long COVID sucks.

Just last week, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) issued a definition of long COVID with the aim of "improving consistency, documentation and treatment." Good news, right? Here's the definition: "Long COVID is an infection-associated chronic condition that occurs after SARS-CoV-2 infection and is present for at least 3 months as a continuous, relapsing and remitting, or progressive disease state that affects one or more organ systems."

This is not helpful. The symptoms can be in any organ system, can be continuous or relapsing and remitting. Basically, if you've had COVID—and essentially all of us have by now—and you have any symptom, even one that comes and goes, 3 months after that, it's long COVID. They don't even specify that it has to be a new symptom. Head over to Medscape to watch the video.