Oh my goodness, yeah, long COVID is REAL! Angel and I both got it very late, and despite the fact that we (even now) haven't left the house since November 2019 aside from going for walks.
Anyway, when we got it, it was brutal. I don't remember being too horribly sick, but I remember losing my taste and how scary that was. How eating was just such a different experience. Taste wasn't 100% gone, but MOST tastes were 100% gone, so everything tasted like nothing at all or had the weirdest little bits of flavor and tasted far different than normal.
And then the brain fog, geez... Even, what, a bit over a year of recovery time and my focus and ability to remember words are still so much worse...