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Comment by zibby8 | Hacker News Reader

I had a very mild case of Covid. 101 fever for < 24 hours. No coughing or congestion. However, I've been without my sense of smell for weeks now. It's so weird to literally smell nothing. I can't smell freshly ground coffee. I can't smell the food I eat. I can't tell if milk is spoiled. I can't even tell if I need to apply deodorant or not. To those claiming "long covid" is really just anxiety, can you explain this manifestation?

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That’s not long covid, that’s post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) which is a different category. If you also have crushing fatigue you might also have long covid. The basic test for this is the test for PEM, exercise as hard as you can and repeat in two days. If you too fatigued to do anywhere close to the same workout then you likely have PEM and LongCovid/ME/CFS.

PASC is considered long covid. Literally the name "post-acute sequelae" means a condition after the acute phase.

I’m aware of what PASC means, it’s a superset of LongCovid that includes other organ damage that is unique to covid. It’s possible to have PASC without having LongCovid but impossible to have LongCovid without PASC.

Again, I think you just have your own definition for long Covid. The CDC does not share your definition: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/...

Long covid is a patient community driven term relating to the ME/CFS class of symptoms. The CDC is using it incorrectly.

Mayo clinic also conflates "long covid" and PASC: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...

As does Johns Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/coronavirus/pact/index.html

Something to consider: maybe it's your usage of long covid that's incorrect?

See https://youtu.be/tFQBcu5qlmE?t=485 for a breakdown of terminology. This is how it started and where it is going back to. This is a bit of history that I've personally lived.

If you investigate you'd probably be surprised just how behind the 8-ball these institutions are. Their inability to predict the bleedingly obvious as corona viruses have a history of triggering ME/CFS. Their many decades of gaslighting patients and recommending harmful treatments such as exercise and cognitive behavioural therapy.

Those of us from the ME/CFS space knew this was coming and knew people with Long Covid were going to be gaslit so we've been educating them on what to expect and how best to treat it. Plus we don't mind that they're rebranding ME/CFS as Long Covid as we'd like these institutions to actually do their job and do some research. We're not expecting an apology for the decades of gaslighting. The main thing we want is for people to not waste time rediscovering what we already know. Conflating the Long Covid (ME/CFS) part of PASC with the organ damage part muddies the water and diminishes focus.

People aren't trying to say loss of smell is just anxiety. They are try to say that anxiety can just be anxiety (The thought of covid itself can cause anxiety), so some of the reported symptoms are dubious. The one that can be tested more objectively have much less room for dispute (processing speed, attention, executive function, and memory).

Hope your smell returns sooner rather than later. My mom has been without hers for 9 months now, which seems to be in the rather unlucky category.

I lost taste and smell, and a regular taking of the following supplements helped me get it back: a) EGCg (from green tea, so take in morning) b) Magnesium Threonate (helps w/ neural repair) c) Agmatine and PQQ (I took both, and I mix up their purposes) d) NAC (this might have been just for immune boost)

If you had to just try 2 of them, I'd try EGCg and Magnesium Threonate -- but it might help you recover your senses. The only thing off for me now is eggs, I'm super sensitive to the sulfur in them.

I had pretty bad case of Delta, all symptoms were gone in 2 weeks, smell returned after 3 weeks (one week later after other symptoms). I'm grateful to my immune system without any COVID "vaccine".

I don't see anyone claiming loss of smell is long COVID, it's two entirely different things, loss of smell is symptom of COVID and you can have it longer or shorter. "Long COVID" is now catchphrase to cover pretty much anything for hypochondriacs. Sure minority of people claiming they have long term issues after COVID can have something which we could call "long COVID", but most of people claiming they have long COVID are hypochondriacs. Ocassional headache? Long COVID. Tiredness? Long COVID. Etc. I've had "long COVID" years ago before COVID.

Honestly I'm not surprised US nation addicted to drugs especially antidepressants is major nation experiecing long COVID, while this long COVID pretty much doesn't exist poorer the country you go and it's exclusive to few western countries.

My brother hasn’t been able to smell since (first?) getting Covid. That was nearly 2 years ago. He hasn’t smelled anything in nearly 2 years!

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