This is the Guardian. The 23rd of March 2020, the date Boris Johnson announced the UK's first lockdown.

From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction.

You must stay at home.

As life for the majority of us has returned to normal, those early days of the pandemic can feel like

a distant memory.

But for the 2 million people in the UK who experience self-reported along COVID symptoms,

COVID-19 is still very present, and for many it remains devastating.

It's something new, it's something different, and it's your body somehow was

breaking down in response to this virus and I hadn't appreciated that I would

continue getting worse. Three years on we still don't know what causes it or

how to treat it.

How could we possibly minimize or trivialize the effects of having been a previously

able-bodied, fully functional, busy professional person who's had all of that blown out the water.

Of course that's somebody who needs and deserves professional help.

So what do we know about long COVID now and in the absence of treatments how are patients managing their condition?

I'm the Guardian Science Editor Ian's sample and this is Science Weekly.

Just to give you a sense of where I'm at. I rested for a good hour or say before talking to you.

I'm currently lying horizontal in my bed with a headset on.

That's Professor Catherine Haymans. She's an astrophysicist, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and she has long COVID.

I've got my eyes closed so I can completely concentrate on what we're talking about and after a conversation I'll

rest for another couple of hours and if I do all of that then I will be able to sound

completely happy and healthy and my normal self while I'm talking to you.

...