  Certain versions of mimetic gravity have recently been claimed to present
potential covariant theories of canonically modified spherically symmetric
gravity, motivated by ingredients from loop quantum gravity. If such an
equivalence were to hold, it would demonstrate general covariance of a large
class of models considered in loop quantum gravity. However, the relationship
with mimetic gravity as presented so far is incomplete because it has been
proposed only in preferred space-time slicings of uniform scalar fields. Here,
several independent arguments are used to show that neither an equivalence nor
a covariance claim are correct for models of loop quantum gravity. The
framework of emergent modified gravity is found to present a broad setting in
which such questions can be analyzed efficiently. As an additional result, the
discussion sheds light on the co-existence of different and mutually
inequivalent approaches to an implementation of the gravitational dynamics
within loop quantum gravity.
