Why are people suffering symptoms long after infection ?

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I can't understand why there are some people I've heard who have been infected with covid and recovered but still suffer with fatigue, breathlessness, organ damage and even not being able to walk or run around as they used to. I remember a guy in his late 40s having lost his speech and then he recovered his speech but his ability to walk and so on was affected by the virus and he had to walk with a frame. I don't if the reasons for these individual experiences with covid is because our immune systems have never had to fight a virus like this before and that it goes into overdrive and as a result damages the organs in the body and damage to the organs from the infection of this virus takes longer to heal or recover from.

As of yet we don't know the cause/causes for sure.
The condition does have a medical name and has been looked at for quite a long time.

This subject is of personal interest since I have had the related (same?) condition ME/CFS for over 15 years now & in mid 1980s my Dad was Navy's first medical retirement with it.

Here's a reference from 1988, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3063394/

I just had a conversation with a friend last night whose Lyme disease (verified by a blood test) did not become symptomatic until shortly after he had Covid. Since it was not during a time of the year when he was spending time outdoors much and he had no recollection of a recent tick bite, he said he thought it may have been acquired pre-Covid and remained latent until the Covid infection taxed his immune system. No idea if this is the case, but it's an interesting theory and makes me wonder if for some people long Covid could actually be a second viral or bacterial illness "unmasked" by the Covid infection.

I am so scared of getting covid, despite being fully vaccinated. It seems to be so common for people of any age to have life-changing effects long after the symptoms have gone. I don't want my body functions to change just like that.

My aunt says she still can't taste properly since having covid, even though it was 3 months ago. Also, despite being fully vaccinated, she still had trouble breathing when she had covid even though she's a non-smoker and doesn't suffer any lung conditions. So if my boyfriend gets covid, he'll probably die even though he's fully vaccinated, because he's got health problems that can make covid lethal.

Also fully vaccinated people on WP keep reporting how ill they are with covid and how they're still suffering affects weeks later. One even said that they knew a healthy and fully vaccinated person who died from covid.

Are the vaccines working or what?

I see a few people here who definitely have LESS DURATION of illness, probably because they were fully vaccinated. They seem to have about a 1-week illness.

I had a 3-week illness before there were vaccines.

I didn’t suffer loss of taste and smell at all.

Indeed, I believe COVID could “unlock” other illnesses, like the ones caused by the Epstein-Barr virus