I understand of course that your post is facetious, but if you were actually interested in an answer, this article in Sciencemag would be a good start:
From ‘brain fog’ to heart damage, COVID-19’s lingering problems alarm scientists | Science | AAAS
Given that the pandemic only hit many places in full force 4 months ago, studies of long-term effects are just at the beginning (as outlined in the article). There are a number early studies showing a vast array of damage (some of them quoted in the article) and other viral illnesses of similar severity are known to have long-lasting effects for some. Given the uncertainty, it seems prudent to avoid going down a path that would leave millions with permanent health problems, in addition to a hundreds of thousand dead.
Thanks for the article
@Twentytothree. At the risk of being picky, this is not an article in Sciencemag (as stated), which is a peer-reviewed well respected journal, but a news story in Sciencemag's news service. There is a big difference, but at least this story is from a reputable news service unlike many other links posted previously. The story starts off with a tragic testimonial from Athena Akrami, and revisits her situation and opinion throughout the article, but single examples are not indicative of widespread effects - this sort of news story writing technique clearly differentiates it from a journal article.
The news story does specifically state that the long-term effects are varied and not well known at this point, and gives a case of healthy people with lingering symptoms, and at-risk patients with quick recoveries. So I think the article argues against your statement that some "are known to have long-lasting effects". The article states the long-lasting effects vary, and are still unknown. Some will always have long-term effects, this should not be alarming.
Additionally there are some very positive results published in the news story that you may have missed.
1) Some cases of Guillain-Barre after COVID-19 have been reported, but “it’s not definite [there’s] a spike,” says Rachel Brown, a UCL neurologist who works with Zandi.
2) “We expected to see a lot of long-term damage from COVID-19: scarring, decreased lung function, decreased exercise capacity,” says Ali Gholamrezanezhad, a radiologist at the Keck School of Medicine, but ...... he has concluded that COVID-19 ravages the lungs less consistently and aggressively than SARS did. “COVID-19 is in general a milder disease,” he says.
3) Severe lung scarring appears less common than feared—Gholamrezanezhad.
One issue the researchers agree on is that those with certain existing conditions, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, pre-existing lung or heart disease, etc., are at a higher risk. Those individuals should hunker down for 6 more months when hopefully a vaccine will be available. If athletes have at-risk family members, the athletes should opt-out, or if they play during the season, quarantine themselves at a hotel or separate apartment.
There are always going to be potentially long-lasting effects when we contract a viral or bacterial infection, so please don't take an open and transparent discussion to mean the effects are especially severe in this case. Even if the long-lasting effects are not found to be wide spread, the shear numbers of infections means local studies can be formed and gather large enough populations to study various symptoms. From these large, local populations we may come to understand not only the effects of COVID-19, but long-lasting effects of various diseases in general as many symptoms to be studied are common to recovery from various illnesses (fatigue, joint pain, etc.).
