“Loss of smell” Google search now trending in West Virginia, Nebraska, Nevada | Hacker News Reader

“Loss of smell” Google search now trending in West Virginia, Nebraska, Nevada

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112 pointsvinnyglennon39 comments

This trend is even more striking (and perhaps more convincing and verifiable) when you extrapolate it out over a longer time scale:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22loss%20...

Edit: just to temper this a bit; trends can be misleading and I'm not stating that this query is a robust indicator. It'd be great to figure out how reliable these charts are.

So.. what's going on in Nigeria?

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=NG&q=%22loss%20...

Exactly what that trend suggests, most likely. Nigeria has 245k (!!) tuberculosis deaths a year, so it's entirely plausible IMO that they could fail to notice an uncontrolled epidemic of a different pneumonia-causing disease.

Interestingly enough, Japan is chalking up success in containment of COVID to its contact tracing system originally developed for TB: https://asiatimes.com/2020/06/japans-contact-tracing-method-...

Not surprising, TB is also a respiratory disease with a long dormancy period. While the details are slightly different (latent TB patients apparently aren’t infectious), one would expect a TB tracing program to be roughly correct for any other respiratory disease. I’m sure the SARS and bird flu outbreaks have given regional governments an opportunity to consider how to prepare as well.

TB has proven to be a great practice run for COVID. Southern African countries have not messed about with it. I still remember just how strict things became even with minor outbreaks. For something like a decade, Zimbabwe has required Foot and Mouth Disease control at borders - long after the risk has passed. I was temperature screened in an airport sometime in the early 2010s in South Africa for a domestic flight. My friends back there can't leave their home 95% of the time, they can't buy smokes, they can't buy beer. African countries are experts at this, and the comparison to America is depressing (including my own idiotic behavior).

The figures I see on the internet for testing in most African countries are not very high. It's become a talking point that more tests produce more cases; couldn't you argue the inverse - fewer tests produce fewer cases?

It appears about 3200 tests per million are reported for all of Africa, compared to say Spain at ~110,000 or the US at around 96,000.

Absolutely, maybe I'm wrong. My experience has just been that Africa deeply respects the power of a pathogen.

Among the top 20 countries with the most new cases at the moment, other than South Africa, Russia, and the US, they seem to all be developing countries outside Africa.

So if African countries in general have had a good response, I wonder why it's spreading so rapidly in countries like India, Mexico, Chile, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Peru, Colombia, Iran, etc...do they not respect the power of a pathogen?

They also have a very young population, which may mean they have more asymptotic/mild cases.

Loss of smell has been reported in their news, and apparently was trending on Twitter among Nigerians.

"Public health physician, Dr Doyin Odubanjo, has reacted to the growing complaints of loss of smell and taste by Nigerians on Twitter, which has since triggered Coronavirus scare."

https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/399665-nigerian...

http://saharareporters.com/2020/06/16/growing-complaints-los...

Is it possible a few local newspapers ran the same headline recently?

It's certainly possible, yep - anything leading to increased searches for exactly that phrase.

Can you think of any related phrases to look for and/or ways to check the trend? (nothing is springing to mind here yet)

Loss of smell was mainly how I suspected I had a Covid - later confirmed with an antibody test. Stay safe people.

What was your experience like?

Very minor. Aside from loss of smell for a month my wife and I had no significant symptoms. I felt pretty exhausted but those weeks in NYC were so crazy that it’s hard to say what was Covid and what was ambient stress. My kids had positive antibody tests but never had symptoms. We were very fortunate.

Loss of smell apparently is correlate with more minor cases and better outcomes. I don’t believe we know why yet.

Either that or people with more serious symptoms have other things to worry about and don't notice/report it. Additional research required.

Thank you for sharing.

I had the same experience in late Jan/early Feb.

The posted URL is of a tweet with an image of google trends data.

Here is a link to the actual website, which allows filtering by time, region, etc: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%201-m&ge...

I get that loss of smell is a symptom of COVID-19, but what’s so special about 1 AM?

When I had the bug in March my symptoms would be sparse during the day and suddenly get worse from 1AM to 6AM. Similar for my partner. Cough would ramp up, cold sweats, fever, and my throat would turn into a sun bleached garden hose full of glitter. We both also had a loss of smell but it wasn’t the primary symptom that bothered us.

Anecdotal, but possibly related.

Huh. I was the exact opposite; there was no schedule for my symptoms. Some days I woke up great, and was exhausted by noon, other days I woke up feeling terrible, and had tons of energy in the afternoon.

My partner and I both work kind of an inverted schedule so it could be our body clocks. I’d bet the searches just have more to do with laying in bed quietly freaking out into google.

I noticed cough popped up (when it did, because it didn't often) when I was going to sleep or first thing when I woke up. Low-grade fever randomly on and off during afternoon or evenings. Loss of taste/smell the duration of a few weeks. Random diarrhea throughout.

Loss of smell wasn't one of the more noticeable symptoms but it persisted for far longer and when smell suddenly 'turned on' and I could all of a sudden smell cinnamon when I sprinkled it onto morning oatmeal the smell seemed insanely noticeable due to its long absence.

This search may be better: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&geo=...

Shows Texas, Arizona and Florida as the most hits.

Apologies for being ignorant - what's the context here?

Loss of smell is a signal symptom of COVID-19.

> signal symptom

What's the difference between a 'signal symptom' and a normal 'symptom'? Aren't all symptoms signals?

Likely s/signal/single/

Nope, a signal symptom is a thing:

https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/signal+symp...

"A symptom that is premonitory of an impending condition such as the aura that precedes an attack of epilepsy or migraine."

By that definition, loss of smell is not a signal symptom for COVID.

I stand corrected.

my guess would be some symptoms provide more information for a unique diagnosis than others. Fever, headache, cough are very common symptoms for many things, like the flu, so having them does not single out covid.

I was reading about this yesterday actually. I think a symptom is reported by the patient, but a sign is noticed by the doctor.

I think "signal" meant characteristic or something like that.

Loss of smell is a symptom of COVID-19, often when it is otherwise asymptomatic.

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