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Comment by eyegor | Hacker News Reader

For myself and several friends who started with poor senses of smell, covid boosted our sense of smell for a brief time after having it. My smell was easily 5x as sensitive for a month after having covid the first time. Now it's back to baseline.

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I found that the lack of pollution at the beginning of lockdown increased air quality and my sense of smell became more noticeable and sensitive. Particularly in many walks around gardens and the countryside which was in spring. Or perhaps my perceptions of the smells increased rather than being able to smell more things.

Even three years later i've still a good smell sense. I love it.

It's possible that I had an early infection that triggered this response.

Yes I noticed the same, I had always thought that my hometown had very clean air (which by comparison it has) and that's why I never could smell pollution. After some staying at home during the pandemic, even the clean modern cars that passed every ten minutes or so on the calm suburb road REEKED of burning hydrocarbons. Going near the main road was terrible. Now again I can't smell the cars, the main road feels like clean fresh air (even though there are way more cars) maybe if a small motorbike drives by I can smell it

Interesting parallel with smoking ... I always had a pretty poor sense of smell, then smoked for a number of years, and for about two weeks after quitting I could smell everything. I didn't know office bathrooms were so bad...

And then similarly it went back to baseline.

This happens to me when I fast for a period or 3-5 days after becoming ill. For about a week after catching a stomach flu, the world smelled and tasted exactly as I remembered it being when I was a kid.

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