A study co-author's response to the social media interpretation of the paper:
...In an email to Health Feedback, Lemogne refuted these claims and pointed out several inaccuracies in the Substack article and social media posts.
“Our results do not demonstrate that long Covid doesn’t exist,” he clarified. “Instead, they strongly suggest that these persistent symptoms after COVID-19 (that are real symptoms for sure as they are experienced) may have other causes than SARS-CoV-2.” In other words, the findings suggest that persistent symptoms associated with long COVID aren’t unique to long COVID alone, and that one needs to rule out other causes before diagnosing long COVID. But the study wasn’t designed to determine whether the condition long COVID exists....
Cédric Lemogne, Head of the Division of Adult Psychiatry, Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu: Regarding the claims in the Substack article:
The article states that “because it looks like “thinking you had covid” produces pretty much all the long term symptoms. having actual covid does not.” But the word “produces” suggests causal links, whereas our study is observational, so symptoms may produce the belief, rather than the opposite. This is even stated in the Discussion section of our study.
The article also claims that “before any knew their serology outcome, they were asked about whether they thought they had had covid and then about a battery of long term symptoms.” This is wrong as they all knew their serology results before being asked whether they thought they had had COVID-19. This is clearly stated in our Methods and mentioned later in the Discussion section[1].
Regarding the claim that our study shows long COVID doesn’t exist:
Our results do not demonstrate that “Long Covid doesn’t exist”. Instead, they strongly suggest that these persistent symptoms after COVID (that are real symptoms for sure as they are experienced) may have other causes than SARS-CoV-2.