Affective dimensions of fatigue in post COVID-19 condition: An interdisciplinary investigation across phenomenology and biomedicine, 2026, Zeiler

[Dolphin]

Affective dimensions of fatigue in post COVID-19 condition: An interdisciplinary investigation across phenomenology and biomedicine - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of Post COVID-19 Condition (PCC), yet it remains pathophysiologically and phenomenologically enigmatic. This article investigates the affective dimensions of PCC fatigue from within qualitative phenomenology and biomedicine, engaging in a...

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Affective dimensions of fatigue in post COVID-19 condition: An interdisciplinary investigation across phenomenology and biomedicine​

• Open access
• Published: 13 May 2026

• Kristin Zeiler,
• S. Morberg Jämterud,
• F. León,
• A. Andersson,
• U. Birberg Thornberg,
• I. Blystad,
• A. Divanoglou,
• A. Eklund,
• D. Engblom &
• R. Levi

Abstract​

Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of Post COVID-19 Condition (PCC), yet it remains pathophysiologically and phenomenologically enigmatic.

This article investigates the affective dimensions of PCC fatigue from within qualitative phenomenology and biomedicine, engaging in a non-reductionist dialogue across these strands.

The article is comprised of a qualitative phenomenological analysis of lived experiences of fatigue in PCC; rehabilitation medicine (physician, physiotherapy, neuropsychology) assessments; brain MRI analysis; an analysis of inflammatory mediators in blood, and a cross-reading of results from these assessments and analyses, in relation to each other.

The qualitative phenomenological analysis is foregrounded, and identifies four affective modes: an affective mode in which patients wanted but had no capability or energy to engage with others and the world; a mode characterised by a lessened or lack of affective pull; a mode characterised by an assault-like feeling, and a mode characterized by a felt sense of “being in a bubble” or “being under water”.

The article sheds light on affective dimensions of PCC that are unlikely to be identified in everyday clinical practice, and the discussion across results from phenomenology and biomedical assessments and analyses brings out additional nuances in the understanding of the affective dimensions of fatigue.

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

Narrations like these revolve around a far-reaching tiredness. Further, they bring out what can be referred to as a disrupted pre-reflective bodily engagement with the world, as the interviewees no longer seamlessly engage with their surroundings, but need to think about what to do and how to act – as they contain accounts of how interviewees forced themselves to act out of sheer willpower.

In Fuchs’ framing, the lived body and the objective body are “complementary aspects of the same life process that connects the living subject and the world” (Fuchs, 2020: 2, 4), and the relation between the lived body and the objective body is understood in terms of intertwinement – the lived body and the objective body are understood as “dual aspects” of the living being (Fuchs, 2020: 3). This understanding underpins our engagement across the results from the project’s different analytic steps

Overall, the project’s multi-step and interdisciplinary design, focused on the lived body and the objective body as dual aspects of the living being, contributed with insights into the variation of experiences of fatigue in PCC in ways that previously, to our knowledge, had not been investigated.

I thought we weren't dûing dualism these days.

 

[rvallee]

an affective mode in which patients wanted but had no capability or energy to engage with others and the world

This not an affective mode in any sense of the word, but as is tradition it debunks the traditional belief that lack of motivation and/or avoidance are the behavioral factors causing the problem, and it changes nothing, because this study is seeking affective reasons and it will assert them regardless of what it finds. This whole ideology is a pure weaponized form of "the only disability is a bad attitude", except 100% serious and entirely uninterested in finding out that it's wrong.

I have no idea what the point of this or who this is supposed to serve, other than the traditional reframing of illness as a mental health condition, but of course this is the entire point, it's all about self-justifying a failed system that is in such a dismal state of failure that it can never see, let alone acknowledge, its own state of total system collapse.

The article sheds light on affective dimensions of PCC

It really doesn't. Not even a little.