A quick search on that page does not show any mention of "loss" nor "smell".

While anecdotal, I do know of at one person that has lost their sense of smell and taste for now over 5 months. Even worse, any smell she can actually notice (often the faintest of smells ) is disgusting to her. Independently of what the smell actually is. That person is young and to my knowledge not in a risk group at all. In the UK, she struggles to even get someone to take it more serious than just prescribing antidepressants. I would not be surprised if many of the minority of people with long-lasting effects are unknown to the system, because either they do not search for help, or because the health system does not take them seriously.

So again, one sample is not a study, but I just want to point out that overgeneralising in either direction does not help.

What would count as "get someone to take it more serious" ?

She has a prolonged non-life-threatening condition with no known treatment. There's no tests to run or nothing more to diagnose, that's apparently done already. There's no drugs or procedures prescribed because, as far as I know, there are no drugs or procedures known to be effective for that. And that (looking seriously at her issue and giving a serious answer "do nothing") is a reasonable end state for diagnosis - it sucks, it's less common nowadays than it used to be, but it still happens.

That's it, the next step is acceptance, not continuing to seek soomeone to "take it more serious" - and if acceptance isn't working and is causing distress that's causing further problems, then indeed the next step is psychological help or pharmaceutical help for the psychological issues. Perhaps a few years later (not sooner) there will be treatment for that issue, so when (if!) that happens, then it would be a different discussion, but until that IMHO it's dangerous to encourage people to keep looking, as it can only lead to various snake-oil charlatans who'll make false promises. If the system would deny her some test or treatment that's likely to help, then it would be justified to seek attention and have someone take the complaint seriously and do the thing that needs to be done, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.

I'm sorry as this does sound like a dismissal, but if there are suggestions about what the system should do differently in this case, I'd be glad to hear, perhaps there can be a better way to go about this, but I'm all out of ideas.

I can't speak to covid because I've never had it, but "take it more serious" can be applied to large swaths of valid medical issues in which doctors brush off as "it's just in your head". In my own case, they quickly jump to the conclusion of stress/anxiety/hysteria without ever asking about my history or my life and without doing any kind of lab work or imaging diagnostics to rule out the medical issues. That is dangerous and thousands of people actually do go untreated for chronic illnesses like MS, Parkinson's, SLE, etc. every year because their providers do not take complaints as serious medical concerns. IMO PCPs are not in a position to adequately diagnose mental issues (especially in a 15 min appointment); that's why we have psychologists. Yet they throw around diagnosis of mental illness like they throw around opiates.

It's an issue of perception and condescending attitudes by medical professionals that is the real problem. If I were a medical professional, I would at the very least acknowledge the problems as genuine physical symptoms and do my best to re-assure the patient that it's being researched by the scientific community so a treatment might be possible in the future.

She has asked to be referred to a COVID specialist group, since there are a few good research hospitals around. Her GP did not do that, but instead prescribed antidepressants.

"I'm sorry as this does sound like a dismissal, but if there are suggestions about what the system should do differently in this case, I'"

Yes, it's completely inappropriate to say 'just take these weird, possibly life-long systems and deal with it'.

'The answer' is obviously to adjust our policies given the fact that 'a lot of people are having symptoms off-the-record'. Meaning possibly aggressive push for vaccines among youth, and factoring this into 'opening up schedules' etc..

The vaccine policies are important, but not relevant to her case - she already had Covid, and a vaccine would not help her in any way.

The parent post and my response was about "the system" not taking her seriously, about the people where the damage was already done - are there any policy adjustments that would be useful for people like that? For people who now do have these weird, persistent, possibly life-long conditions, is there any better option than "dealing with it"? Denial helps noone, and can be quite harmful.

> The vaccine policies are important, but not relevant to her case - she already had Covid, and a vaccine would not help her in any way

There've been reports that people suffering from long-COVID have seen improvements after getting the vaccine.

I don't know why this is being downvoted. I've read it, too.

HN votes by how "truthy" something sounds - things can get really random the further the subject is from software/tech. Confirmation bias is a bitch.

Then she should get the vaccine. In fact, the CDC says she should: "Yes, you should be vaccinated regardless of whether you already had COVID-19."

What additional actions should be taken by the medical system or the political system at this point for a (supposed) disease that has no known treatment or even any understood cause?

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html

Link to an NPR story that reported this https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/03/31/9827994...

Sorry to hear that, it must be very hard for her.

The daily had an episode[1] about a food critic who lost her sense of smell after a COVID infection and the effort she went to in order to get it back. Her descriptions of what it was like to eat her favourite food without being able to taste made me want to wear two masks.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/podcasts/the-daily/corona...

I had COVID in December and just last week I had my sense of taste go out for two days. There’s no way I was re-exposed. Before that my taste had recovered completely. Such an odd thing.

I also had really bad Parkinson’s-like shaking a few times, but luckily that’s gone away. Post viral issues do happen with other diseases and I’m personally glad COVID’s symptoms of it are so unique. From personal experience doctors have a hard time acknowledging fatigue. This should lead to more research on the matter.

Have your friend try smell training. No experience or plug, but I listened to this NYT podcast that explained the loss of smell and how you might be able to recover it. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/podcasts/the-daily/corona...

I have had post-viral fatigue after flu a couple of times and now seem to have "long COVID". I agree they are probably related but the COVID version is much worse, I have been ill now for over a year with no signs of improvement.

If possible, might be worth trying to get a Covid vaccine. For completely unknown reasons that seems to help a lot of long-haulers

Have had the first shot, worse now than before.