[jnwatson]

I lost my sense of smell from a minor virus I caught a couple years ago. It probably wasn't COVID (I tested negative at least).

It came back very slowly, and unevenly. My coffee/chocolate taste is still quite dim.

Of all the possible smells to lose, why did it have to be those?

[gradientsrneat]

Hard to say without more info but most at-home COVID tests have a very high false negative rate due to the virus mutating and generally how the test is designed.

[phainopepla2]

It's also the case that respiratory viruses predating covid often cause temporary loss of smell, it just wasn't much in the public consciousness before covid

[nsxwolf]

Definitely possible, I lost my sense of smell completely for a couple of months over a decade ago after a minor cold. Completely gone, could not even smell gasoline. It was pretty upsetting. One day it was a faint scent of peanut butter that came back, and a few days later it recovered completely.