The bizarre COVID side effect no one is talking about

[Quixote1818]

[Salviati]

1. One of my friends who got it near the start of the pandemic...

... took over a year to get her sense of smell back to mostly normal. She had a relatively mild case of covid, and I don't think has experienced any other long term effects that I know about, just a messed up sense of smell.

[elleng]

2. Fascinating and disturbing,

and for 2? years, my sense of taste has changed, don't/can't enjoy coffee and many other things. Haven't had covid, and sense of smell is OK.

[IronLionZion]

3. All senses are electrical signals interpreted by our brains

weird stuff going on with smell and taste. Just wait until something affects sight, touch, or hearing. Although some folks have reported ringing in their ears with COVID. Either way, I wish we didn't have millions of people in our country who are openly pro spreading the virus around as much as they can.

[Warpy]

4. Getting it early was weird beyond belief.

In the beginning, the symptoms were high fever, cough, and chest pain. Period. It's only when I was a few weeks out from a fairly mild case that they started talking about the headache and loss of taste and smell as hallmark symptoms and it fell into place, "That's that weird thing I had for two solid weeks!"

My sense of smell came back in an on and off manner in about six weeks. The first thing I could smell was a carrot I was chopping and it didn't smell weird, it just smelled super strong after nothing for so long. Once I'd finished cooking, I was back to not smelling or tasting again. It would just come back ad odd moments and I did do some smell training on my own. Noq my sense of smell is reliable, it's just a bit blunted at times, disappointing when I've cooked something more elaborate than usual.

I lost a hell of a lot of weight during the worst of it. The pounds all came back to the scene of the crime, alas.

If I had parosmia, I'd have to go around in a nose clip. It's the only way I'd be able to cook or eat.

[snot]

5. I've had this for several years -

I had a bad flu ca. 2015 or 16, knocked me out like none before. Saw my doc a couple of months later and was diagnosed with asthma for the first time. I began having taste problems around the same time. My taste experiences now are like those described by the women in the video – some things are tasteless; others taste garbage-y or otherwise wrong; chicken's pretty disgusting unless drowned in a spicy sauce, etc.

Until Covid came along, I never connected the asthma and the taste issues, but I've come to suspect they might both have been triggered by that bout with the flu.

This video actually describes and explains the situation better than I've seen before.

[Texin]

6. I had an endoscopic procedure in January and lost some sense of taste

as a result of the anesthetic used (Propofol). I was only under for about nine minutes total. I wasn't aware at first but realized it after when I began to cook again. I seem to recall it lasted about 3 weeks to a month, then pretty quickly returned thereafter. I looked this up online at the time and the research did indicate that it's common following anesthesia like Propofol (short-acting), but there are others that don't seem to interfere with the sense of taste/smell.