Covid: A Sample Size of One
and maybe a silver lining
On January 9th I tested positive for Covid for the first time; in the next few days the three other members of my family tested positive as well. Given the effect Covid has had on the world in the last few years I was curious to observe it at first hand.
My chief initial symptom was exhaustion, later frequent violent sneezing and a very bad cough which made sleeping difficult and very nearly eliminated my voice. I ended up doing my weekly hour long Skype conversation with my grandson with him talking, me writing. Fortunately, being a male Friedman, he likes to talk.
One other symptom was an almost total loss of appetite. We were just back from our winter travels visiting friends, two of whom are good cooks, and my weight was about two pounds above a hundred and sixty which I try to maintain as the top of its range.1 By the time most of the symptoms were gone it was down to about three pounds below. Think of it as the Covid diet.
I was vaccinated and had Paxlovid so not at much risk of dying from Covid, unlike three years earlier when I, being old and male, self-quarantined tightly along with my immediate family until a vaccine became available. Fortunately we get along pretty well, three of us are cooks, one of my hobbies for the past twenty years was planting fruit trees, and one of my daughter’s is growing vegetables.
I have had serious illnesses twice before, once flu and once pneumonia. What I learned from the latter was that recovering from pneumonia is worse than having it; as my lungs healed they threw off a lot of liquid that had to be coughed away. I ended up running my Pennsic bardic circle in a whisper, that being how much voice I had left at that point. My experience with Covid was about as bad as the previous two but no worse; the extreme coughing lasted for only a couple of days and my voice is already beginning to recover.
A Novel Symptom?
The most interesting symptom was the effect on taste. Some people with Covid lose their sense of taste, sometimes for an extended period. The effect on me was the opposite; tastes became stronger, uncomfortably so. I used to keep a cough drop in my mouth until it dissolved, now doing so is sufficiently unpleasant that I suck on it for a minute or two, take it out for a few minutes, put it in again, perhaps five or six rounds before it finally dissolves. Brushing my teeth is unpleasant due to the strong taste of the toothpaste, occasionally leading me stop part way through to rinse my mouth out with water. I like eating pistachios but they are now too salty. When I had salad with the dressing I make for myself — ingredients include chili garlic sauce and grated ginger — it burned my mouth. That didn’t used to happen.
A Silver Lining?
There are a number of facts about my past tastes that suggest a more optimistic interpretation of what is happening. I am much less picky about what I eat than my wife and children. I like spicy food, unlike the rest of my immediate family. For my two weeks every summer attending the Pennsic War I drink the local water; most people bring their own. At home the rest of the household drinks filtered water, for reasons of taste not health; I don’t bother. I have never seen the point of people buying bottled water when it is free from the tap.
All of which suggests that perhaps there has long been something defective in my sense of taste; my younger son has occasionally suggested that I burned it out sometime in the distant past with too much spicy food. Perhaps Covid somehow fixed it, brought me back to what is normal for other people. I find the way things taste now unpleasant because I am not used to it — but most people don’t make salad dressing with chili garlic sauce as one of the ingredients. Perhaps the problem is only that I have not yet adapted to the change, will find it an improvement when I do.
Interestingly enough, this is the second time my medical issues have affected my sense of taste. About twelve years ago I had surgery to remove a meningioma, a “benign” (meaning non-cancerous) tumor, from between my skull and my brain. During the extended recovery period I was prescribed steroids and discovered that taking them affected my sense of taste — positively. As I described it to my wife at the time, it made cottage cheese taste like ice cream. If one could reproduce the effect with something harmless it would be of considerable value but, being neither a food scientist nor an aspiring entrepreneur, I never followed up on the idea. After I stopped taking the steroids the effect went away.
Will it this time? I don’t know. If not, it may at least align my tastes with those of my family, convenient for meal planning — currently I solve the problem by sprinkling pepper flakes on as needed. At best, once I have fully adjusted, I may find I have a new sense.
One I never realized I was missing.
As I write this (January 24th) the other three members of my household have tested negative. I still test positive, although the line on the test is much weaker than before and took longer to appear. Symptoms other than the effect on taste are most of the way down although I still cough more than usual and tire easily. I mostly avoid speaking but my voice seems to be gradually coming back.
A Question
I am left with one question: Is my symptom novel? Have any of my readers seen an account of Covid making tastes more intense rather than less or observed the same in their experience?
If my morning weight is above 160 I am not allowed ice cream that day. It works pretty well.
A question for commenters that has nothing to do with this post.
I have considered offering a paid option for my posts. It would provide nothing not available with the free option, just a way for people to pay me if they feel like it. I don't need the money, would probably pass it on to the Institute for Justice, the one charity I routinely support.
My reason to do it is largely my memory of my relation with SSC, which for some time was a majority of my time online. I arranged to pay money to Scott's Patreon because I was getting a large benefit from his work and felt I owed him payment. I'm not sure if enough people would feel that way about my posts to make it worth offering the option, or whether there might be negative effects.
Opinions? I'll probably put this in the comment thread of my next post as well.
It is a known fact that taste buds are like muscles. You can deaden them by bombarding them with too much salt, spice, or sweet. They get weak if they don't have to work to taste something delicate because you've overloaded them with strong flavors. People like me who avoid sugar find that things that used to taste a bit sour, like an imperfect strawberry, now taste delightfully sweet. And many experiments have shown that people who go on a low-sodium diet lose their taste for high-sodium meals. Too much salt now tastes dreadful to them and to me. People who brag about being able to stand really hot chili peppers are just bragging that they've successfully deadened their ability to taste. I was doing that for a while, with excess amounts of spices, but now I'm retraining myself, so that I can fully taste the amazing flavors of plain food.
But you write an interesting column on igniting your taste buds!
I avoid ice cream for two reasons beyond the taste bud argument: The calories involved could go toward life-giving and health-giving foods, instead of foods that harm the body and lead to heart disease, cancer and dementia in old age, to name just three. Also, the cow that gave up the milk that would have gone to its calf has been known to search for that calf for miles, or mourn it with loud bellows. As Milton Friedman told the Whole Foods founder John Mackey, he could find no justification for consuming animal products after listening to Mackey's argument. See Mackey's book: "The Whole Foods Diet." Your mom said that in his 90s, he was too old to become a vegan. I hope he did it anyway.