The study compilation link is awesome, thank you.
I should really just ask my rheumatologist but uhhhh she’s on vacation for a couple weeks. 
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My sister said hers went away pretty quick. She went from normal to can’t smell my deodorant or Vicks* in one night.
*Of course we traveled with Vicks to a carribean resort. It’s part of the Latino packing checklist.
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Yes me! I lost completely all sense of taste and smell for 5 days except for sweet and salty. I had runny nose, head ache, aches and pains and exhaustion too, the baby had fevers. Both myself and the baby got tested and we were both negative.
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I lost my sense of taste with a horrific cold turned sinus and cheat infection/this spring. I had three or four negative tests and my pulse oxygen was repeatedly remarkably high for the amount of coughing I was doing, and we’ll above covid ranges.
I do think that losing taste and smell is something that I’ve had a few time before. With covid it seems to be more common and is neurological and not local if I’m understanding right.
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I have that “things taste funny” or “things taste metallic” and “that smell isn’t as strong as I expected” with a lot of regular colds.
Everyone I know who has had covid had “I stuck my nose in a container of bleach and smelled nothing”
(But I’d still get tested if I was you.)
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If anyone is looking for masks for very small faces, I recommend these. Adjustable ear straps, has a band on the nose.
They are great for my 2-year old, but too small for my 4-year old.
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For me, my loss of taste was pretty gradual. There were a few days where things tasted muted or strange. Then I lost my taste completely for a week or so, and it gradually came back over the following month.
So sorry this is happening! Do you have a positive test?
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My aunt is a badass. We had my grandmother’s funeral this past weekend with family from many states. Masks during the service, then a rapid testing station in the yard for the family reunion with a negative result required. She rocked up with 22 rapid covid tests and a picnic table. 
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Well shoot, thanks. Was still playing “Covid or cold?” yesterday since I don’t have to go in, but he’s going to get me a home test now. If it’s negative I’ll decide if we need to follow up with pcr.
Edit: thank God for the vaccine.
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Fingers crossed it’s just a cold!
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How are the covid numbers as bad as they are?
The US is back to where it was late last fall, my state exactly where it was at this time last year.
Are vaccinations just not doing anything? Even if cases are predominantly unvaccinated, how is it spreading THIS MUCH? Were we just THAT locked down last summer? Did restaurant closures make the difference?
My area of the country never really felt THAT locked down, but maybe my view was skewed because I don’t go out much anyway. But last fall most kids were in regular school, most restaurants were open with limited capacity again.
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Delta is several times more infectious than what we were dealing with last fall. Vaccines are doing A LOT to keep people from getting super sick, but don’t seem to be as protective against contracting against delta as they were against the earlier variants. Delta is the difference.
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Delta predominantly. 
we’ve lost a lot of the protective effects of being outdoors, for example, it seems. And vaccinated people are now carriers more often.
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Yeah, I assume the rates of infection are actually MUCH higher than reported.
Because, at least here, unvaccinated people are not getting tested when they are sick. They are tested when they are hospitalized.
I hadn’t heard the outdoors thing.
My daycare FINALLY decided to require masks again, but still only inside.
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B_J, do you have good resources you’d be willing to share on outdoor spread? I’ve found a few things here and there (mostly quoting Berkeley/Stanford profs) but was wondering if you’d found something different/with more actual data.
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No, sadly we’re still waiting for actual studies to come in. It’s mainly theoretical based on the rates of transmission and the fact that it’s more contagious. More contagious anywhere means more contagious everywhere, even outside. That means outside offers less protections. It’s still going to be safer than inside, relatively.
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Australia has offered us some compelling data what with the passing in the street type transmissions going on. They’ve really been a global example of really tight Covid protocols, and they’ve had so many leaks just because of how much more contagious Delta variant is. They’re up to a couple thousand cases a week now if I recall correctly.
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A lot of people are getting tested as a matter of routines for work/school - so looking for the positivity rate for local tests is the best indication of the real infection rate is much higher.
Early on in the pandemic it was very hard to get tests so I think we had a lot of symptomatic cases not getting tracked.
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I haven’t heard of anyone who does that around here. Quite honestly, it’s like the pandemic is over (except the parents freaking out about kids returning to school with mask mandates illegal.)
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No one is testing for work or school here, either. It’s a whole different world.
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