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The first time I realized I had Covid, I was doing laundry and noticed that the bleach I was using had no smell. However, over time my sense of smell did retur

The first time I realized I had Covid, I was doing laundry and noticed that the bleach I was using had no smell. However, over time my sense of smell did return. The current Covid strain spreading in the US no longer has the loss of the sense of smell as such a common symptom. > only around 10-20% of her Covid patients lose their sense of taste or smell now, compared to around 60-70% early in the pandemic. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-symptoms-mild-follow-pattern-doctors-say-rcna105090 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-symptoms-mi...

ceejayoz 3y ago
> The current Covid strain spreading in the US no longer has the loss of the sense of smell as such a common symptom. I wonder if this reflects evolutionary pressure towards symptoms that don't make you go "oh shit, definitely COVID, stay home and mask up".
- actuallyalys 3y ago
  That does seem plausible. The fact that most people had prior immunity by the time Omicron arrived (whether from infection, vaccination, or both) could also play a role.
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    It is more likely prior immunity. Everyone now has enough antibodies and T-cells so that even if we get infected it isn't anywhere near as likely to escape outside of the respiratory tract, and the anosmia-affected neurons are mostly protected, even though you can still get sick.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      > even if we get infected it isn't anywhere near as likely to escape outside of the respiratory tract That hasn't stopped the virus from spreading with increasing effectiveness and each time it moves to a new host it has a chance to mutate into something we aren't able to defend against, or something that brings new harms. The loss of warning signs letting us know when we're infected is a bad sign.
      - lamontcg 3y ago
        > That hasn't stopped the virus from spreading with increasing effectiveness It really doesn't. They've finally stopped talking about the idiocy of every single new variant being 2x to 4x times as transmissible as the last variant because the math would be fucking stupid with an R(t) of something like >1024 by now. They've been conflating immune evasion with intrinsic transmissibility for the past several years. That has finally started to disappear. > each time it moves to a new host it has a chance to mutate into something we aren't able to defend against, Except that we're not observing any pattern of mutations around T-cell epitopes in the virus suggestive of any risk of immune escape from T-cell recognition -- which it the important defense against severe disease and death and those defenses that we have are what has turned the virus milder. The whole reason why we likely have a two tiered immune system[*] with fast neutralizing antibodies and slow T-cells is likely because the end product of 500 million years or so of evolution favored immune systems that were clever enough to force these kinds of viruses to evolve to escape only the first line of defense. > The loss of warning signs letting us know when we're infected is a bad sign. No, that's a sign our immune systems work and its not their first goat rodeo with a pandemic virus. Really, how counterintuitively up your own ass do you have to be to take the very clear signs that the symptoms are abating and turn that into something to fear. [*] well multi-tiered, but those are the two biggies of the adaptive immune system.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  I wouldn't say pressure, rather filtration: easy to spot variants can be isolated so spread is less likely, so filtered out from existence. Hard to spot variants may be easier to spread since well, ppl may think it's just a minor cold, no need to dtay at home/mask
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    That’s called natural(ish) selection, the mechanism for evolution.
smcl 3y ago
I had the same thing - I was making something spicy and couldn't understand why it had absolutely no taste. This was just as Covid was taking off in Europe and I was quarantined at home after a trip in Austria. I had about 3 days without any taste whatsoever before news began to circulate that loss of taste/smell was a common symptom and that's when I became one of the first couple of hundred in the country I live in to test positive for Covid.

ceejayoz 3y ago

> The current Covid strain spreading in the US no longer has the loss of the sense of smell as such a common symptom. I wonder if this reflects evolutionary pressure towards symptoms that don't make you go "oh shit, definitely COVID, stay home and mask up".

actuallyalys 3y ago
That does seem plausible. The fact that most people had prior immunity by the time Omicron arrived (whether from infection, vaccination, or both) could also play a role.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  It is more likely prior immunity. Everyone now has enough antibodies and T-cells so that even if we get infected it isn't anywhere near as likely to escape outside of the respiratory tract, and the anosmia-affected neurons are mostly protected, even though you can still get sick.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > even if we get infected it isn't anywhere near as likely to escape outside of the respiratory tract That hasn't stopped the virus from spreading with increasing effectiveness and each time it moves to a new host it has a chance to mutate into something we aren't able to defend against, or something that brings new harms. The loss of warning signs letting us know when we're infected is a bad sign.
    - lamontcg 3y ago
      > That hasn't stopped the virus from spreading with increasing effectiveness It really doesn't. They've finally stopped talking about the idiocy of every single new variant being 2x to 4x times as transmissible as the last variant because the math would be fucking stupid with an R(t) of something like >1024 by now. They've been conflating immune evasion with intrinsic transmissibility for the past several years. That has finally started to disappear. > each time it moves to a new host it has a chance to mutate into something we aren't able to defend against, Except that we're not observing any pattern of mutations around T-cell epitopes in the virus suggestive of any risk of immune escape from T-cell recognition -- which it the important defense against severe disease and death and those defenses that we have are what has turned the virus milder. The whole reason why we likely have a two tiered immune system[*] with fast neutralizing antibodies and slow T-cells is likely because the end product of 500 million years or so of evolution favored immune systems that were clever enough to force these kinds of viruses to evolve to escape only the first line of defense. > The loss of warning signs letting us know when we're infected is a bad sign. No, that's a sign our immune systems work and its not their first goat rodeo with a pandemic virus. Really, how counterintuitively up your own ass do you have to be to take the very clear signs that the symptoms are abating and turn that into something to fear. [*] well multi-tiered, but those are the two biggies of the adaptive immune system.
Moldoteck 3y ago
I wouldn't say pressure, rather filtration: easy to spot variants can be isolated so spread is less likely, so filtered out from existence. Hard to spot variants may be easier to spread since well, ppl may think it's just a minor cold, no need to dtay at home/mask
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  That’s called natural(ish) selection, the mechanism for evolution.

smcl 3y ago

I had the same thing - I was making something spicy and couldn't understand why it had absolutely no taste. This was just as Covid was taking off in Europe and I was quarantined at home after a trip in Austria. I had about 3 days without any taste whatsoever before news began to circulate that loss of taste/smell was a common symptom and that's when I became one of the first couple of hundred in the country I live in to test positive for Covid.