“I felt so suddenly immersed in the world that I realized how much I had been removed from it.”

Shedding one’s sense of odor, or discovering it altered, is one devastating symptom of Covid-19. It’s nonetheless not recognized how lengthy it lasts. Many individuals who expertise it are left questioning in the event that they must reside with out scent for the remainder of their lives.

Writing in The Atlantic, Michel Paradis, a Columbia legislation professor, shares his experiences residing with Covid-19-induced parosmia — a distorted sense of odor. Diapers smelled nice, espresso noxious; in the meantime, the few whiffs he had of “true” smells have been so transient that he puzzled whether or not he was hallucinating.

“Without smell, I did not just lose my appreciation for a detail about the world,” he writes. “Life itself assumed something closer to the mediated, low-stakes cast of a Zoom call.”

Learn the remainder of his essay on the Atlantic: