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Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

wsj.com

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Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#61

Post by abiogenesis »

arcticbull wrote: post #40
H8crilA wrote: post #37

Losing your sense of smell, while painful, is nothing compared to what other things can happen to the surviors. 50% of ICU patients have clotting problems. In fact it's so common that all covid patients are now put on anti-clotting medication, immediately, no questions asked. Would you mind losing your leg (getting that clot stuck in lower limbs)? Or getting a stroke (getting that clot in your brain), and losing a si…

50% of ICU patients isn't even close to 50% of infected though, so it's important to keep that in mind.

Did 50% of infected lose their sense of smell or taste?

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#63

Post by GuB-42 »

macintux wrote: post #42
irq11 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same middle ground that exists for every other cold and flu, every single year. Anosmia is a common side effect of a variety of illnesses, and in the vast majority of cases, it resolves on its own. But this fact doesn’t make good headlines.

Indeed, but there is no shortage of evidence that this disease is more damaging than the flu. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/covid-19-... > “These data demonstrated that the recovered SARS patients had a poor quality of life 12 years following recovery, and were susceptible to inflammation, tumors, and glucose and lipid metabolic disorders,” researchers wrote.

Loss of smell is special because it tends to happen to mild cases more than severe cases.

The idea seems to be that SARS-CoV-2 can infect both the upper and lower respiratory tract. Lower infection attack the lungs and are typically much more severe. Presumably that's what makes SARS classic so deadly. Upper infections are typically milder but spread more easily, that's what the flu and common cold do.

Loss of smell would indicate a upper respiratory tract infection, and therefore a higher chance of generally mild symptoms, more like the flu than SARS.

I don't know what the latest scientific literature has to say about that though, everything is so recent. Loss of smell wasn't even recognized as a symptom 3 months ago...

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#64

Post by jliptzin »

ceedan wrote: post #52
bashinator wrote: post #9

I lost my sense of taste a few years ago, from a combination of extreme stress and the flu. Lasted about a week, and it was utterly terrifying. I first noticed it when I tried to eat, iirc scrambled eggs, and couldn't stop gagging on the texture. Once I figured out what was going on, it took a couple days to figure out what I could eat without retching. I ended up being entirely vegetarian - meat without taste is a h…

Years ago, I also lost my sense of taste for a few days (toothpaste burned my tongue)... I would also describe it as terrifying and immediately depressing. The next day I had pizza and cake with tons of frosting, but everything tasted like soap. I was really concerned that the damage to my taste was permanent. I was in disbelief for a few days. As I ate my regular meals, I just reminded myself that they were things I…

How does toothpaste burn your tongue

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#65

Post by HarryHirsch »

macintux wrote: post #3

So much emphasis is placed on the fatality rate, but there’s a lot of middle ground between asymptomatic and dead.

Here's a first-hand account: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/health/coronavirus-peter-...

Also: the Theodore Roosevelt. The captain wouldn't have risked his career for a bunch of sailors with bad flu. But apparently all of the propulsion team was affected to such an extent that they couldn't tend the reactor any longer. It's that bad.

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#66

Post by akiselev »

kibwen wrote: post #26
bashinator wrote: post #9

I lost my sense of taste a few years ago, from a combination of extreme stress and the flu. Lasted about a week, and it was utterly terrifying. I first noticed it when I tried to eat, iirc scrambled eggs, and couldn't stop gagging on the texture. Once I figured out what was going on, it took a couple days to figure out what I could eat without retching. I ended up being entirely vegetarian - meat without taste is a h…

Curious, my partner is also extremely texture-sensitive and has not been able to stand eating eggs or meat for as long as they can remember, but can definitely sense smell and taste. I wonder if there's some interesting connection there.

Aversion to the texture of eggs, dairy products, meat, or fungi (mushrooms) is relatively common so probably not.

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#67

Post by 5ociety »

macintux wrote: post #42
irq11 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same middle ground that exists for every other cold and flu, every single year. Anosmia is a common side effect of a variety of illnesses, and in the vast majority of cases, it resolves on its own. But this fact doesn’t make good headlines.

Indeed, but there is no shortage of evidence that this disease is more damaging than the flu. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/covid-19-... > “These data demonstrated that the recovered SARS patients had a poor quality of life 12 years following recovery, and were susceptible to inflammation, tumors, and glucose and lipid metabolic disorders,” researchers wrote.

1. Is there such evidence? I don't consider articles to be evidence.

2. How MUCH more than the flu? 0.00000000000000001%? Any amount is enough to justify mass hysteria, right?

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#68

Post by narengowda16 »

ceedan wrote: post #52
bashinator wrote: post #9

I lost my sense of taste a few years ago, from a combination of extreme stress and the flu. Lasted about a week, and it was utterly terrifying. I first noticed it when I tried to eat, iirc scrambled eggs, and couldn't stop gagging on the texture. Once I figured out what was going on, it took a couple days to figure out what I could eat without retching. I ended up being entirely vegetarian - meat without taste is a h…

Years ago, I also lost my sense of taste for a few days (toothpaste burned my tongue)... I would also describe it as terrifying and immediately depressing. The next day I had pizza and cake with tons of frosting, but everything tasted like soap. I was really concerned that the damage to my taste was permanent. I was in disbelief for a few days. As I ate my regular meals, I just reminded myself that they were things I…

"perfect sense" is a movie about a virus attack, where people starts to loose all 6 senses gradually. Must watch!! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1439572/

I remembered this movie because, when people losses their sense of taste, the hotels re-invent it's business model by serving food with different textures!!

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#69

Post by Mikeb85 »

macintux wrote: post #3

So much emphasis is placed on the fatality rate, but there’s a lot of middle ground between asymptomatic and dead.

This. I had it. Literally every symptom except loss of taste and smell (but had some other rarer symptoms like the pink eye thing). Also had a cough for like a month, and loss of energy and breath for about a month and a half. Only just recently feel 100%.

While it was shitty and lingered a while the worst of it wasn't actually that much worse than a flu for me. Somewhere between the flu and bronchitis on the scale of how sick I've been in my life.

Re: Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet

#70

Post by [deleted] »

GuB-42 wrote: post #59
H8crilA wrote: post #37

Losing your sense of smell, while painful, is nothing compared to what other things can happen to the surviors. 50% of ICU patients have clotting problems. In fact it's so common that all covid patients are now put on anti-clotting medication, immediately, no questions asked. Would you mind losing your leg (getting that clot stuck in lower limbs)? Or getting a stroke (getting that clot in your brain), and losing a si…

And about 30% of ICU patients die. If you get to that point, it is really, really bad, worse than most cancers. The thing with losing the sense of smell is that it seems to happen mostly to mild cases. Cases where you wouldn't even call yourself a "survivor" any more than you would call yourself a flu survivor or a common cold survivor. That's the scary part, we are not talking about a few percents, most of them elde…

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