@illiterato I think so, I hope so - it's just glacially slow.
Cognitively, I see steady-ish improvement. That's essentially what I've been doing on Mumsnet the past year or so, practising basic reading, writing, interacting. Now turning to my usual reading materials, and can see glimpses of my previous levels of focus, absorption, analysis. However, it's still only for a short time each day, and even that's erratic.
Physically, improvement has been measured in how easy or not to keep on top of basic life tasks like cooking, cleaning, laundry. I was just gearing up to try some actual exercise, like a walk, when I whacked my tail. I've been active my entire life, so completely sedentary and without muscle tone is new for me. There was An Incident last summer where I set off for a gentle walk, but a combination of endorphins from movement, joy at being in nature, and muscle memory whispering that I can do all this and much much more, all snowballed into massive over-exertion that took weeks to recover from. So I'm a bit scared.
Coming up to my 3 year anniversary! Horrifying really. Based on what I know of other post viral syndromes (after tropical illness), I'm guessing 5 years might be a realistic timescale to restore normal-ish functioning. If I'm lucky.
The biggest barrier to public understanding of long Covid is that when you interact with someone with a post-viral syndrome, you will almost definitely be seeing them during their only functional window of the day. They may seem fine, however that window of normal functioning might only be 30 minutes long - and then they can't stand upright anymore, or string a coherent sentence together.
That was long! Exhausted my cognitive capacities for the day. I tried to gloss what I have in the first thread because someone or other had always just tested positive with normal Covid, and I didn't want to freak anyone out.