I understand that people don't like being told "you no longer have lyme disease" when they are still experiencing symptoms, because it can feel dismissive, but no one is ever saying that the only way to experience symptoms is an active infection.

Everyone has had bronchitis or something where you still feel cruddy after the disease is gone, and it takes a while to get back to 100%, but somehow, with Lyme, people don't understand that.

Especially with covid, lots of people still had lingering symptoms like a cough that took a while to go away well after they started testing negative.