Agony of post-COVID-19 loss of smell

@Wobot.  He was actually very proud he's now immune! 

It would be helpful to tell him that he shouldn't assume he is immune. He probably has increased immunity, but it's not known how long this will last, whether he can get reinfected with the same strain, with possibly milder, but also possibly more serious symptoms. We know even less whether his first infection offers any immunity to other variants, which are constantly appearing, including the newly reported Tokyo variant. And of course, he could be reinfected, asymptomatic, and then infect an older or vulnerable person who then gets seriously ill.

If noone tells him, he is more likely to put himself at risk by assuming he can't catch it again, so a good friend would do him this favour.

According to Raoult's group, which is also involved in olfactory rehab, it is important to start the rehab as soon as possible.

And apparently, there is significantly less anosmia with the UK variant.

Did no one continue studying this once that variant was gone?

Post viral olfactory disfunction is a well described syndrome, and is one of the uncommon consequences observed by infection by any of the usual viruses that infect the upper airways, not only influenza but also viruses that cause common cold (or even other kinds of infection).

The research is not abandoned, but is not a first priority either so it advances very slowly, the specialist are not surprised a huge pandemic or respiratory infections would mean a lot of cases of PVOD, unfortunately one thing is to know it will happen (and somewhat an idea why) but another very different is to be able to do something about it. At this point probably the options are steroids immediately or training after the acute infection passed

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7361320/

At least it appears that most of the patients will slowly recover at least some of the sense of smell after a while, but maybe not completely.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25198029/

For those who hate Natto and got covid, my advice would be just start eating it by the gallons. Its extremely healthy. I'm lucky in that I actually like it, but for those who don't, it might be a good idea to eat anything that you don't like but know to be healthy

I am a bit confused!

This is not something that was never seen before.

About 30 or 40 years ago ( sorry not exactly sure the year) an influenza variant was going around and the same thing affected many younger people, mostly late teens to late 20s.

It was widely known and the loss lasted from a few months to being permanent, my sister didn't recover here smell of taste for a little over 3 years.

Did no one continue studying this once that variant was gone?

One would think that the experts would have realised something like that would eventually happen again.

There isn’t such a thing like post-COVID. It’s only ‘with COVID’ while acutely infected or sick and after that you mostly (about 90％) have one, many or a combination of Long-COVID symptoms.

This a very serious issue when it comes to loss of smell. Doubling down on smoke alarms and making sure that they are always working properly is a must do. Here in the states they are sugar coating these effects by going from the name "Long Covid" and diluting it with the trucking term "Long Haulers". It's Covid all day long, everyday and that's the reality...

Wonderful, without a sense of smell ze people vill have no taste and zey won't mind ze bug burger ve have prepared for zem!