In a Civil Service survey carried out over six weeks in September and October, staff were asked whether they would describe themselves as experiencing “long Covid” – battling mysterious symptoms more than four weeks after first getting the virus. According to data published last week 10.8% answered “yes”. This compares to ONS data finding 3.3% of people living in UK households said they were experiencing self-reported “long Covid” symptoms. So, for some reason civil servants are more than three times as likely to suffer “long Covid” as the rest of us.

Guido can clear up this medical mystery. It is because so many of the people who go into the civil service are looking for a cushy life, not to work hard, because they are work-shy lazy good-for-nothings. Fact.

On a similar note the Daily Sceptic reports that a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at “post–COVID-19 condition (PCC) in young people after mild acute infection” to find how common it was and to find risk factors. PCC is more colloquially known as “long Covid”. The researchers discovered: “PCC was not associated with biological markers specific to viral infection.” That is, millennials in the study were equally likely to claim to suffer from ‘long Covid’, whether or not they had suffered from acute COVID-19. The researchers concluded that ‘long Covid’ is predicted by “initial symptom severity” and, intriguingly, “psychosocial factors”. Guido reckons the “psychosocial factors” are that they too are work-shy lazy good-for-nothings.

No doubt Guido will get some tragic email about exceptional cases. Nevertheless, the miracle cure for ‘long Covid’ appears to be self-employment…