I empathize especially with the author's account of "covid nose." For me, Coca Cola now tastes like patchouli. When I say that out loud, it's easier for others to believe I'm simply a hypochondriac, or that I've forgotten what Coke tastes like, or possibly it's made differently where I'm from. As far as I can tell, it's nerve damage. How could I forget the taste of summer vacation?

Back when smell loss was a common side effect of Covid, the NYT ran a series of articles on retraining one's sense of smell, by e.g. smelling all the jars on the spice rack. I found those articles patronizing. I can instantly recall what both Ceylon and Korintje cinnamon are "supposed" to smell like, but those memories are now mismatched with my olfactory system. All I can do is decide whether to accept the new sense, or just avoid the taste altogether.

We don't discuss smell like we discuss our other senses. Perhaps it's due to the difficulty of producing smell on demand, unlike within the visual or auditory domains. Despite being one of our most basic senses, smell seems to lie behind an inherent veil of subjectivity. My experience with continuous olfactory "hallucination" made me second guess that.