the whole idea of the long COVID is totally overblown.

Disclaimer: I'm commenting this before having read the article.

Have you been keeping up with what happened to PhysicsGirl, a very public example of long COVID? It's clearly a "thing", so to speak? Or what exactly do you mean by "overblown"?

Edit: I don't think you can generalize and say "the WHOLE IDEA of long COVID is 'overblown'". This for me, highlighted strongly in the article, I feel is the main takeaway:

This doesn’t mean long COVID is 98% less common. It [just] means that how we design these studies fundamentally changes which health effects we can reliably attribute to COVID.

Emphasis and a word added by me.