On the taste/smell thing- people I know who've had that symptom say that it is qualitatively different from the loss of taste/smell you get with a bad cold. In particular, they also lost the ability to taste things like salt and sugar, which people with a cold can still taste. My understanding of this may be outdated, but I thought that tasting those wasn't an olfactory thing- am I wrong, or is the ability to taste salt and sugar dependent on different epithelial cells that are also damaged?

(Interestingly, these people did retain the ability to sense the 'heat' of chili peppers...)