One of the telling symptoms of COVID-19 is anosmia, or loss of smell and taste. Almost a year after the pandemic began, a small number of people who have recovered from the new coronavirus still need to recover those senses, leading doctors and researchers to study the various ways in which anosmia can change a person’s life, usually for the worse. .
“You think of it as an aesthetic bonus,” said Sandeep Robert Datta of Harvard Medical School in a recent report on New York Times.“But when someone is denied their sense of smell, it changes the way they perceive the environment and their place in the environment. People’s sense of well-being diminishes. It can be very shocking and disconcerting. ”
O Times says that prolonged anosmia can lead to “social isolation and anhedonia, an inability to feel pleasure, as well as a strange feeling of detachment and isolation”, in addition to a loss of appetite. Dr. Datta says that although prolonged loss of smell and taste is rare in those who have contracted COVID-19, enough people have already had it (more than 20 million in the US), so “we are talking about potentially millions of people”.
All in all, it’s just another potential horrendous side effect of the pandemic, which is spreading across the country at worse rates than ever due to a lack of government action and financial relief that would allow everyone to be safe and secure at home.