ALT Long Covid as Russian Roulette Doctors tend to be more concerned about the chance that someone will develop long Covid from repeated infections than they are that a person will get very sick in the acute phase of the illness. Covid can cause long-term damage to nearly every part of the body and repeated cases can compound those harms. A number of studies have shown that each time someone contracts Covid introduces an opportunity to develop long-term symptoms. Researchers often compare it to Russian roulette: Any infection could be the one that leads to long Covid. “Every time there’s a wave, there’s another wave that’s going to follow with patients developing new onset long Covid,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University.