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Tracking Coronavirus by Smell Test
- Causality1 7y agoGoogle and Facebook could pull this off very easily.
- wila 7y agoYou can use google trends for that: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=can%27t%20smell https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=can%27t%20...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- acd 7y agoCould you train Corona dogs then that would smell test patients like a check by dogs at the border customs patrol?
- est31 7y agoYes, people are trying that. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/highly-trained-dogs-could-help-combat-the-spread-of-coronavirus-heres-how-they-might-sniff-it-out-2020-03-31 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/highly-trained-dogs-could-... Note that this article is about a corona symptom, Anosmia, not about the ability to smell patients. According to this [1] source, it only shows up in 30%-60% of cases. [1]: https://www.entuk.org/sites/default/files/files/Loss%20of%20sense%20of%20smell%20as%20marker%20of%20COVID.pdf https://www.entuk.org/sites/default/files/files/Loss%20of%20...
- tjansen 7y agoAbout 6 weeks ago, I had a cold. I didn't think much about it, because at that time the virus wasn't supposed to have arrived here (reports started a week later). I had a dry cough initially, chills on two nights, but without fever, and some light trouble of breathing, which isn't that unusual for me in Winter and I blamed on my allergic asthma. However, when it was mostly over, I noticed that I wasn't able to smell my daughter's dirty diapers. Usually I am pretty good at smelling her even if she's in another room, but I smelled absolutely nothing, even when changing the diaper. That was long before I read the first reports of anosmia. Ever since I wonder whether I already got it.. I guess I will never know..
- janekm 7y agoAntibody tests that can detect whether you have the antibodies that the immune system develops while combating the disease already exist and will become common-place and cheap at some point. So then you will be able to know...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- throwanem 7y agoPay attention to the rollout of antibody tests. When available, those will tell you whether your blood contains immunoglobulins targeting the virus, and thus whether you've had it. If you have, consider also paying attention to news about serum transfusion projects in your area. That's a process by which an immune person donates antibody-containing plasma, which is then transfused into patients with active disease or at-risk people to supplement their immune system with "targeting data" for the disease. It can significantly improve people's chances, and is one of the longer-term (and admittedly less likely, since no one is really certain yet whether or how well it'll work) possibilities I'm looking at for how to effectively volunteer as an immune person once my own COVID-19 case resolves.
- ageitgey 7y agoI had pretty bad Corona-like symptoms in late January/Feb in London. There was documented community transmission at that point, but it was very early (single digits) so it's technically possible but not mathematically likely that I had it. The more I've mentioned this to people, the more I've heard people bring up their own stories and theories that they all had super bad flus this year unlike any other year and are all convinced they already had COVID. So everyone has convinced themselves that they already got it, no matter what city they were in at the time and whether they got sick in November or February. This is hard to grapple with because I'm sure that any give year, a lot of people randomly get a bad flu like they've never had before with unique symptoms. And if you happen to be that person this year, then of course you would think you had this new disease that matches the symptoms. But given the lack of secondary community effects at the same time (other hospitalizations in your area), it's more likely that most of us are wrong and it's just a co-incidence. But if you are the person suffering the coincidence, it appears the same as if you are the person who actually got infected. So who knows? I guess until antibody tests are widely available, none of us will know for sure.
- neonate 7y agohttps://archive.md/PQyi9 https://archive.md/PQyi9
- bamboozled 7y agoIs this so unusual though? I feel like when I get a flu or cold I often lose my sense of taste/smell and it's partly why I lose my appetite ? I guess it's due to a blocked nose / inflamed mucous membranes, maybe that's what is different?
- jryan49 7y agoI don't have any proof I had it but I think I did around Valentine's day. It was very different from the type of smell loss from inflammation. I had no inflammation in my nose and could breathe through it fine, yet nothing. Usually with inflammation I can smell or taste if I sniff a bit. This was like a switch was turned off. I haven't had anything like it before. It took almost a week for it to start coming back. I thought it wasn't coming back that's how pronounced and strange it was.
- bpaddock 7y agoBody Zinc levels are linked to the sense of smell. One of the many places linking Zinc and sense of smell: https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-zinc/art-20366112 https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-zinc/art-203661... There have been reports of Zinc being used in conjunction with other medications to address C19.
- bitwize 7y agoI've been using zinc suckies as a form of prophylaxis against respiratory viruses for a while now. There's actually some research that suggests it's effective at preventing cold virus particles from attaching to and invading the throat, so it doesn't surprise me that it would also be effective against COVID-19 (which is kind of a super-Saiyan cold virus).
- spookybones 7y agoHow often do you take them? I have some that advise to stop using after seven days, which leaves me wondering whether I should take them as a precaution or take them if I feel any early indicators of a virus. Also, I notice that they dry out my tongue.
- georgeam 7y agoDo you mind sharing how many mg (milligrams) of zinc are in the one you have which advises to limit use to 7 days? I noticed that the Mayo clinic site says the maximum dose per day for an adult is 40 mg. I'm curious whether this 40 mg is safe for indefinite use, or such a 40 mg limit would also be for a maximum of 7 days.
- jermeh 7y agoAnecdotal, but someone very close to me who works on machinery realized one day that he could not smell gasoline at all. A few days later, he tested positive. It seems to be a good indicator for some.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rolivercoffee 7y agoResearchers crunching data from a COVID-19 symptom tacking app in the UK have come to similar conclusions [1] [1] https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/research-update-april-1-2020 https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/research-update-april-1-2020
- m3kw9 7y agoCDC should include people that can’t smell recently to do a test right away as a precaution.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago>> If enough people who suddenly found themselves without a sense of smell self-reported their condition, you might well create an early warning signal that told you where the virus was heading, and how fast. I am skeptical. A test based on the sense of smell would have a very high amount of noise. There is no good, concrete measure of a person's sense of smell. One has to ask the person to get a "measurment" and it's very hard to know what different people would mean by "I can smell fine" or "I can't smell as well as I used to". Maybe some people would convince themselves they have no sense of smell (like some people convince themselves they are gluten or lactose "intolerant"). Maybe some people who have a weak sense of smell anyway (because they smoke or live in places with a high level of air pollution) would tend to ignore having completely lost their smell. In any case, it would be very hard to track real infections with such an unreliable measure.
- pen2l 7y agoI’m covid19-positive and I don’t have any impairment in my ability to smell nor do I recall having such impairment in recent time. The most salient symptoms for me have been GI problems.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- akavel 7y ago"[The doctors] concluded that roughly 80% of the people who lost their sense of smell would test positive for the coronavirus, and that somewhere between 30% and 60% of those who had tested positive for the virus had also lost their sense of smell." covid19? --> ~30-60% chance of loss of smell loss of smell? --> ~80% chance of covid19 [in the data they collected]
- nitrogen 7y agoOther things can cause loss of sense of smell too, long before covid19, so it would have to be way more prevalent in covid than any other cause for that 80% to make sense. If so, that's interesting.
- adrianmonk 7y agoI've seen two other neat ways proposed to try to track the virus: (1) Do PCR tests on wastewater. Viruses show up in excrement, and sewer pipes are a ready-made aggregate sample collection system. See https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.29.20045880v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.29.20045880v... (2) Figure out which keywords correlate with other data about the spread, then mine social media data for those keywords. See https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.24.20026682v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.24.20026682v...
- joelvalleroy 7y agoWould 1) work if the tap water has chlorine? Can a dead or inactivated virus still be tested for? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-chlorine-added-t-1998-05-04/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-chlorine... "To ensure continued protection against harmful organisms, a certain amount of chlorine must remain in the water after treatment. The remaining chlorine is known as a residual chlorine. It is this tiny amount that you sometimes smell in your tap water." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/water.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/water.html "Can the COVID-19 virus spread through pools and hot tubs? There is no evidence that COVID-19 can be spread to humans through the use of pools and hot tubs. Proper operation, maintenance, and disinfection (e.g., with chlorine and bromine) of pools and hot tubs should remove or inactivate the virus that causes COVID-19."
- adrianmonk 7y agoChlorination is an interesting question. On the one hand, the paper says the researchers did tests of actual sewage and found it worked in practice. On the other hand, wikipedia says (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...) chlorine isn't generally added to the water supply in the Netherlands.
- Metacelsus 7y agoRNA isn't very stable, so I wouldn't be hopeful
- jessriedel 7y agoI am baffled that even in the age of corona the author feels the need to begin a story about proposed vital monitoring methods with a vingette about his father. If the author discovers the secret to medical immortality, will the article he writes about it first tease us with a love story to hook our interest?
- whatshisface 7y agoOn the other side of the spectrum from people who don't care about people, are people who care about people so exclusively that they can't naturally spend any time thinking about material measures that might help people.
- zwieback 7y agoI'm as nerdy as the next guy here but I enjoyed the opener.
- jessriedel 7y agoI enjoy stand-up comedy, but the usefulness of journalism suffers if mere enjoyment is the standard for inclusion.
- James_Henry 7y agoYes, burying the lede was strange, but I'm glad he got in Danzig's theory that singing might be one of the ways that this thing spreads very effectively.
- baq 7y agoanecdata: i like a good story and this one wasn't bad
- adrianmonk 7y agoCould postcards with scratch and sniff actually be useful here? If you just ask people about their sense of smell, I'm not sure they can give you a reliable answer. But maybe you could design a postcard to give them with a few numbered squares on it, and they could tell you whether they notice anything when they scratch each one of those. (It could be a blind test, too.) Stick a URL or QR code on the postcard and you can collect the data. The postcard could serve as both material for the experiment and advertisement. Mail them out to random people in an area you want to sample. I've gotten these sorts of things in the mail as advertisements in the past, so obviously it's very feasible to produce them.
- gentleman11 7y agoJust wave a container of garlic under your nose
- terramex 7y agoInterestingly, you can see increase in searches for "I can't smell" on Google Trends since 8 March. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=i cant smell
- seles 7y agoTrue, but it didn't really start to spike until around the march 22-28 bin and there are articles about this around that time, for example a quick google serach finds https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/lost-sense-of-smell-coronavirus https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronav... from March 23 So this could easily be explained by people googling about the theory itself.
- HSO 7y agoHendrik Streeck, the researcher who identified loss of smell and/or taste as a covid symptom in the first place, recently stated that it seems to occur primarily in the later stages of the disease (although he cautions that this has not yet been studied enough to be sure about it). So I'm not sure if this is really useful to track the disease. Unfortunately I only have this German source handy: https://youtu.be/VP7La2bkOMo?t=178 https://youtu.be/VP7La2bkOMo?t=178