Yeah, last time I was sick I had the flu. I had lingering effects for around 8-10 weeks after. Eventually I had to go to hospital to get checked.
I feel a lot of Covid effects are being massively overblown because people aren't aware that other more common viruses that we don't worry about can have these "long term" effects as well.
People aren't worried about 8-10 weeks of lingering effects.
Those 4 week and 8 week statistics are part of an attempt to understand what's going on. It doesn't mean 8 weeks is considered long covid.
They are worried about effects where people got it months ago and are still disabled from it. Things like still struggling to walk upstairs 6 months after getting covid.
And that young, fit people are reporting it, not just "old".
The worry is that it doesn't appear to be getting better for them yet. The greatest worry is that people who get it might never recover, or might take years to recover. We can't know yet.
Flu and other viruses affect some people that way, but it's a small number of unlucky people. The worry is that the number affected by long covid in this way are a much larger number of people.
I have a colleague who is essentially disabled from it & has not returned to work, after 8 months, so I have first hand experience of what you speak.
My fear is that this is super, super, super rare, but figures are including long term as low as 8 weeks, so we have absolutely no idea how small / large the number of people having this critical level of long term effect actually is.
I feel a lot of Covid effects are being massively overblown because people aren't aware that other more common viruses that we don't worry about can have these "long term" effects as well.