Its alarmist as well. They give no indications of how long after covid the xrays or analysis is taken, they have no longitudinal idea how long the scarring lasts, and this;
"When someone recovers from pneumonia, whether it's a bacterial pneumonia or a viral pneumonia, it's going to take some time for their chest X-rays to improve. Chest X-rays lag your clinical improvement. So you may be better, but your chest X-ray still looks bad," he said. "And we know that people with COVID-19 can get severe pneumonia, and some of that pneumonia will lead to damage to the lungs that will take time to heal. And some of it may be permanent."
They haven't even described how covid lungs are any different.
As is so often the case now this is a media spin article based on the comments of one Doctor. Who gives no substantiation of her comments.
I've had pneumonia at least twice in my life, never fun, and yes it does take time to get completely back. Even 6mths later with hard cardio you feel like you're hacking a lung once in awhile, but it does get better.
I suspect this does too, and theres no indication, and nobody knows that it doesn't.
Also "Worst Smokers lungs" have COPD, and have worse trouble breathing always, and which remains. Kind of a silly article.
Pneumonia, Bronchitis, Pleurisy, all bad, but lungs amazingly can heal through time. The article gives no information on how bad Covid scarring is relative to those.