I don't have time to read that entire paper, but it's also more focused on somewhat severe and specific neurological problems, which isn't really what I'm talking about.

https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1989/12/11/1026/htm

I don't have any giant studies about long covid outcomes relative to the population baseline, but here is one interesting one that takes a small random sample of post-covid (but fully recovered) and PASC (post-acute sequelae) individuals and does an in-depth metabolic panel. The noteworthy part here is that they excluded anyone who had hospitalized or had abnormal chest CT post-covid, limiting it to less severe cases.

The discussion mentions that, on average, PASC individuals were more likely to be younger. It acknowledges that this could be due to sampling error (younger people more likely to take sequelae more seriously), warranting further investigation, but could also be due to "exuberant immune response," which (if true) would go to show that there's more to it than just comorbidities.

And of course I am biased, as a fit and previously healthy mid-20s-year-old with VOR disfunction and persistent, nonspecific fatigue and digestive problems, 9 months post mild-Covid. But anecdotally, my doctors have described seeing many patients with similar issues (especially vestibular).

My point was also not to suggest that the average 30 year old would be debilitated by COVID, but simply that "it's getting less deadly on average" does not mean that it cannot still inflict unpleasant sequelae that are life-altering even if they seem mild compared to strokes and seizures. COVID is a disease of "manageable but weird and annoying debilitation" in my eyes, which is why long covid remains simultaneously a big problem but also somewhat elusive and difficult to characterize. It isn't going to bring down society, just leave some of us feeling shittier for an unknown/indefinite period of time.

While true over longer periods of time, that first point is also a platitude that feels nice but is not necessarily true on a local scale. Delta was demonstrably more deadly than its predecessors. Also, while the disease is less "severe" in terms of killing people, it's still a nasty sickness that does very strange things to your body. A large proportion of people with long covid had a mild acute illness yet are still ending up with bizarre metabolic dysfunction or having their senses (smell, hearing, vestibular) damaged.