This is a question I ask myself regularly.

Three obsevation lead me to this personal interrogation :

• The very intriging "Long Covid" cases that seems to be able to severly alter quality of life of certain people

• Some link the Covid seems to have with auto-imune disease and other long term affections

• Global and constant decrease of life expectancy worldwide since 2020 (see chart) https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

  

Reminder : Period life expectancy is a metric that summarizes death rates across all age groups in one particular year.

For Covid, I would have expected a steep decrease in life expectancy in 2020 but then returning to equal or higher value after that. But it seems to have triggered a trend over 2021 too, perhaps indicating longer term affection or continuous mortality over vast group of ages if covid is actually involved.

Also, the fact that this decrease concern all continents seems to indicate a global trend, and less likely a cultural or specific trend change like nutrition habits or life hygiene for example.

Irreversible long-term health affection could be by instance :

• Long term or permanent deterioration of certain organs

• Permanent deterioration of any vital metric

• Permanent deterioration of immune system

• Sensible reduction of life expectancy

Resolves to YES if there is a scientific consensus emerging before 2034 indicating long term irreversible health affection for 20%+ of world population.

Resolves NO if there is no proof of no clear consensus.

It could be interesting to follow the life expectancy chart over the next years to see how the trend continue.