That was the point of this ex-vivo study, to determine how kidney tissue responds to the virus in the absence of an immune response. The result showed cellular damage and fibrosis was directly caused by the virus.
But your point about the immune/inflammatory response in general causing great damage and mortality is certainly well documented.
There was a recent study in Germany that followed up on (mostly mild to moderate) recovered patients 9 months after recovery, and found widespread organ damage. All of these patients were pre-vaccine, so it was definitely the virus. There are going to be long term impacts on our healthcare system from this virus.
One of the recommendations from the study is for people to have systematic organ screening performed 6-9 months after recovery from COVID. Heart, lungs, liver, kidneys.
Thanks for the link; I am actually trying to read the PDF file. The “phenotype” term, details, esp.
A couple of files (from my stack of stuff) that may interest you, or for your collection:
Evidence of Structural Protein Damage and Membrane Lipid Remodeling in Red Blood Cells from COVID-19 Patients
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00606
Physical phenotype of blood cells is altered in COVID-19
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006349521004549?via%3Dihub
And, Mobeen Syed, MD explanation: “COVID-19 Causes Long-Term Blood Cell Changes”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=721WMC5pZ5A