So I had Covid about 4 months ago. Did all the vitamins, minerals, supplements, etc. I got over it in about a week. Wasn't the worst, wasn't the least cold/flu I've ever experienced. FF to about a month ago. My morning commute takes me very close to the shore of the Florida Keys. We had an unusual high tide that seemed to last for a week, or it seemed that the tide lined up to my passing every morning to be very high. Then I drove past low tide, and it was the most intense nastiness I've ever smelled from the ocean.
I asked around at work and got tepid responses. Everyone was "meh" about the smell. Cue the next several days. Suddenly I started smelling that swamp smell everywhere! I take a shit, there it is. I cook bacon, same smell. Beef. Pork. Chicken. I'm now hyper sensitive to the actual swamp smell that I'm the only one who notices it in a group.
The condition I have is called parosmia. I've researched that it can go away if I train my brain to remember what smells are supposed to smell like. Apparently the virus destroys smell receptors in the brain and when they grow back, they don't grow exactly how they used to be.
I'm writing this post for anyone who is suffering from this and thinks they're going crazy like I once thought. I don't think my sense of smell will ever be the same. Luckily for me though, it is not as bad as other people are saying. I can still eat bacon. It's like in the Matrix where the kid is bending the spoon. Don't think that the bacon is sour, instead, think that the bacon is not there at all.
Are you male or female? The reason I ask is that I just heard from someone I know, that the smell thing apparently attacks more females than males. No idea if that's true ...
I'm male. I identify as male. You may address me as he/him. Maybe males tend to be more quiet about it?
People who lost taste and smell that I personally know include 2 young males and 2 females in their 50s.