paired with diminished taste and continued mentions of potential chronic ongoing fatigue and mental fog, it probably got mentally weighted higher as something to be defensive toward

it's a pretty primal human fear to be stripped one by one of your senses, considering it's not as common in other cases of illness VS the sudden worldwide common repeated exposure to covid when in some public places, added on with some general anxiety from covid it's not entirely hard to understand others viewpoints being emotionally skewed