My Ponds facial moisturizer smells like cookies. My hair products, shampoo, and soap oscillate between crayons and cantaloupe. Peanut butter smells like crayons or chemicals, while garlic and onions smell like chemicals or caramel. In fact, "gently caramelized" and "lightly charred" are the prevailing aromas of my distorted reality. It's like there's a muted electrical fire in my brain at all times, quietly smoldering from the effort of rewiring the circuitry of olfaction.

— Read more in How I'm Working to Regain My Sense of Smell, Nearly 6 Months After Having COVID-19 at Popsugar.

For those 15 minutes, I am not working; I am not reading the news on my phone; I am not doomscrolling through Twitter; I am not being “productive” (read: checking my email, learning Spanish on Duolingo, checking my email again). The process has proved more enjoyable and rewarding than any meditation I have ever tried. Sometimes when I close my eyes while sniffing, I’m transported to India or Lebanon or Mexico, on a sensory tour of multiple cultures and culinary ideas that has taken my brain far beyond the confines of quarantine in New Jersey.

Gabe Friedman uses his parents' spice cabinet to retrain his nose after Covid-19 took his sense of smell. Read more in The World in My Nose: After COVID stole my ability to smell, I found a solution that reawakened my senses—and much more at Slate.

For most people, smell, taste and chemesthesis recover within weeks. In a study published last July, 72% of people with COVID-19 who had olfactory dysfunction reported that they recovered their sense of smell after a month, as did 84% of people with taste dysfunction. Claire Hopkins, an ear, nose and throat consultant at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, and her colleagues similarly observed a speedy return of the senses: they followed 202 patients for a month, and found that 49% reported complete recovery over that time, and a further 41% reported an improvement.

— Read more in COVID’s toll on smell and taste: what scientists do and don’t know at Nature.

British scientists studied the experiences of 9,000 Covid-19 patients who joined a Facebook support group set up by the charity group AbScent between March 24 and September 30. Many members said they had not only lost pleasure in eating, but also in socializing. The loss had weakened their bonds with other people, affecting intimate relationships and leaving them feeling isolated, even detached from reality.

— Another article, if you can stand it, about Covid-related anosmia. Read more in Some Covid Survivors Haunted by Loss of Smell and Taste at The New York Times. Hat tip to thomkallor!