Olfactory inversion

 　　"What the hell are you doing?" Mom yelled at me from across the room. I've walked around the house many times, smelling it in the east and looking in the west, trying to find the source of the stench. I replied casually: "Something stinks, I have to look for it." Suddenly, I saw a jar of chopped onions, which was probably it. "That's it! These onions are broken." I exclaimed. Mom hurriedly took the jar from me and put it back in its place. "I just cut it 15 minutes ago, how could it be bad," she said.

　　I contracted the virus in April last year, just as India's second wave of outbreaks hit, and the global number of infections soared. Although my symptoms were not severe, I also had constant fever and headaches during the ten-day quarantine period. When quarantine ended, I felt like I could finally breathe a sigh of relief, but that was just my wishful thinking.

　　After a month, I started to smell all kinds of pungent odors, like something was broken, and there was a metallic odor mixed with it. After looking around, I think everything went bad, the onion and garlic being the culprit.

　　I thought this symptom would gradually go away, but it didn't. For a whole month, I could not eat, and I had no appetite at all. Until one day, I saw information about the sequelae of the new coronary pneumonia on the Internet. I didn't quite understand what that meant at the time, all I knew was that I might not get better soon.

　　Sequelae refer to symptoms that appear 30 days or more after a positive nucleic acid test result. These symptoms can affect all infected people, including those at low risk. Researchers have identified more than 200 sequelae, and "smell paralysis" is one of them. People with parasmia will mistake normal odors for "bad or even disgusting" odors.

　　While a parasmia isn't directly life-threatening, it can be very uncomfortable. "The symptoms of parasmia vary from person to person, some are mild, others are severe," says ENT doctor Richard Orlandi. What bothers

　　me is that I'm not sure what the symptoms are. He has not recovered due to insufficient treatment. So I've been interacting with young women who are at a loss like me and finding answers on my own.

　　Aditi Mehta, 24, from New Delhi, India, developed typical symptoms of Covid-19 in April last year, even though she had received a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine by then. She said her symptoms went away within a day. But a month later, she had problems with her sense of smell. She went to consult a doctor but got no answer. "The doctors don't know what's going on," she said.

　　Madison Evangelista, 29, who lives in Washington state, has lost her sense of smell for several months, and doctors are helpless. Evangelista contracted COVID-19 in December 2020, before widespread vaccinations began in the United States. A few months later, she developed symptoms of parasmia.

　　Her friends told her it was impossible because everyone around her who had Covid-19 has recovered. "I think it must be my fault, because everyone else is fine," Evangelista said.

　　Many people find it helpful to look up similar symptoms online because they can find people who are sympathetic. To Mehta, just finding the name of the condition online felt like finally having an explanation. "Seeing the name, I finally know that my condition is not a hallucination, and I'm not the only one," she said.

　　This has also made many people realize that olfactory inversion brings huge losses. "It's one of my five senses after all," said Vashnavi Bajpayee, a 21-year-old Indian medical student. Her nucleic acid test in November 2020 came back positive.

　　Even though smell plays an important role in people's perception of danger, nutrition, social relationships and health, it is still often overlooked. To put it simply: without the sense of smell, there is nothing.

　　For me, the most unexpected consequence of an inversion of the sense of smell is that I lose my sense of security. I double check the stove because I don't think I can smell a gas leak. Some people think I'm exaggerating, but after talking to Bajpayee, I think it's totally excusable. Bajpayee said she once boiled water without smelling the plastic bucket being burned. She called her mother and said she was going crazy and didn't know how to live alone in the future.

　　For others, the hardest part is not being able to enjoy food as much as before. At the height of my condition, the mere thought of eating brought my mood to rock bottom. My inner struggle would be constant: smell problems made me not want to eat, but I had to. Not only did my sense of smell lose my appetite, it also ruined one of my most cherished hobbies—simple cooking or baking would drive me nuts. In the end, I had to give up cooking altogether in order to make myself less miserable.

On January 15 this year, Brandon Dahl, who was less than two years old, woke his sleeping parents and fled the burning house in Texas, USA. Brandon's parents, who were recovering from Covid-19, didn't smell smoke.

　　I have found that many people have similar experiences. Rachel LaFerrier, a 22-year-old student in Ohio, contracted the virus last August even though she had completed her Covid-19 vaccine. After that, she felt that a lot of the food smelled like two-week-old eggs, always smelling like onions and garlic. The paranoia prevented her from enjoying the good times in her life. "I've always really liked the taste of all the food in the restaurant. But now it's all ruined," she said.

　　Sriia Garg, 21, from the Indian state of Haryana, contracted the virus in June last year. Being able to eat normally was a huge blow to her. Puff pastry with green chutney is her favorite breakfast, and she has eaten it regularly for the past seven years. "I tried it again recently, and it didn't work. This problem is probably going to be with me forever, and I have to try to ignore it," she said.

　　At present, my condition has improved a lot, but still not fully recovered. I still can't eat onions and garlic. Reactions to this unexpected and potentially long-lasting change have also varied.

　　Some people say they try not to think about it and hope that they will eventually get better. "If it doesn't work out, I'll learn to adapt," LaFerrier said.

　　But for some, Omicron makes them more anxious. "I'm worried about getting reinfected," Evangelista said. "I don't know what reinfection will do to my sense of smell."

　　But it's not just those of us with the after-effects who need to be careful.

　　Many people say that "Omicron is not very toxic", but this judgment based on "either contract the disease or die on your own" is a contradictory lie, and ignores the part of people in the middle, those who may People who suffer from sequelae for a long time.

　　Most of the people mentioned in this article experienced only asymptomatic infections. And Arizona State University's School of Health Sciences found that 67 percent of people with mild infections still had other symptoms 30 days after a positive nucleic acid test result.

　　Nowadays, many people believe that people with mild symptoms can live a normal life after 10 days of isolation. This statement of neglecting Omicron has already caused serious consequences-some places even hold "new crown parties" to specially make people infected with Omega. Microron.

　　The epidemic is still raging, and the virus is still mutating. These two points alone are enough to attract our attention. Or look at me, you don't want to wake up in the morning to find your coffee smelling like spoiled milk.