I just had it last week, and I almost completely lost my sense of taste and smell.

I'm feeling better and no longer testing positive this week, but I still have basically no sense of smell.

I managed to avoid getting COVID until August 2023 and I lost my sense of smell. It took over a month for the sense to slowly come back, even after I tested negative.

The interesting thing is that I tested positive for COVID and went into quarantine, but didn't lose the sense of smell until a couple of days later. Seems like it set up shop in my lungs to start and only migrated up to the sinuses later. I also only really felt bad (low energy, aches, chills) for the first day, afterward I felt fine except for the loss of smell/taste but tested positive for another 5 days.

Google Trends confirms it looks way milder now: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

I've had COVID 5 times since mid 2022 and have had total loss of taste and smell 3 times. The only reason I think two of those infections were mild is because they were almost back to back (3 infections within 10 weeks at the start of this year).

Nov 2022 first time Covid-er here. I lost my sense of smell for about 2 weeks. I noticed it ~2 days before the illness really hit me (it mostly just drained me of all energy.)

It's provably not lost, I know 2 people who experienced loss of smell/taste in 2023. Hopefully though it's reduced in severity and frequency.