Like everything else, one has to define their terms.
It's like the term "case". Prior to the Covid madness, a "case" was nominally someone who was ill with something. No more. A case is now someone who tests positive for the virus, even with no symptoms or illness. And this is the vast majority of people who have been tested positive.
I get it that a person who gets Covid and complications from it directly cause some kind of organ damage is real. Or..... because someone has an underlying condition that Covid takes it to another level, is real. And then we can say with intellectual honesty that person might have "long term damage".
But for the typical situation where a person gets ill with it and recovers, it is pure speculation that long term damage has happened because until a long time passes, there is no way to know.
And I also get it that for some people, not knowing what might happen represents enough risk that they will take every precaution, including forgoing playing and forgoing getting paid. That's their choice.
That certainly wouldn't be my choice. And I'll bet that a relative few NFL players would forfeit their seasons and their paychecks, and a good portion of them would do it not so much for Covid but as a social protest.
