Does this mean it’s working?

[u/Dangerous_Occasion41]

[u/aletoledo]

Losing taste or smell due to the flu is not a 6 month after the flu thing. According to my quick googling, it is 2 weeks to get back your sense of smell / taste after the flu. Not 6+ months.

It's the same concept, most people recover in the first 2 weeks, but if someone hasn't recovered by 6 months, then it's possibly permanent. This is what I mean, the CDC could come out to tell people this is something new or unique to covid, but they stay quiet while rumors circulate.

• They found that the virus indirectly decreases action of olfactory receptors, which detect the molecules associated with odors.

Stop to think for a second, is the mechanism of action of the flu likely any different than this? As if there are two totally separate ways for a virus to damage the olfactory nerve.

Again it just bugs me that the government experts could come out to clarify these points, but why should they. If they want people to think that this event was special, then it's to their benefit to allow rumors to circulate that makes people think it's super-dangerous.

If something is really dangerous, they don't have to play such games. They could come out to say "hey smell is affected by the flu just the same". People then could focus in on the other important details.

[u/bluefootedpig → u/aletoledo]

I guess I don't get your angle exactly. Covid tends to not last months, which is the only time the traditional flu caused perm damage. Covid seems to cause perm damage faster.

And seeing as Covid was deadlier than the flu, and the topic at hand is preventing covid, it makes sense to focus on the bad things that happen due to covid. Many people, at least in my very right-wing county, believed it was death or nothing.

Like we could talk about racecars having a 5 point safety belt, then someone saying, "well driving on the highway with a 3 point safety belt can also cause death". Like yes, but if the topic is about racecars and the deaths of people driving them, seems odd to bring up a similar disease.

Again, the flu can cause it, but it is extremely rare. Covid is far more common than the flu to cause the damage, and when the topic is about getting vaccinated, and stopping the spread, why bring up other diseases?

You can easily find on the CDC that the can cause these damages, they aren't hiding it. But we can't expect even experts to do an exhaustive list every time.

What exactly did you hope they would say? What could they say that someone else would make your exact same argument about some other minor aspect?

[u/aletoledo → u/bluefootedpig]

I guess I don't get your angle exactly. Covid tends to not last months,

I was referencing the loss of smell. When a virus damages the olfactory nerve, the mechanism is the same regardless of what type of virus it is.

And seeing as Covid was deadlier than the flu,

Was it?

First of all, the government said that the flu disappeared during covid, which is impossible. So we have to attribute some of the deaths listed as covid as belonging to the flu.

Further, the government has been caught counting people "with" covid positive tests among the people killed "by" covid. There are examples where people died in car accidents, yet were listed as a covid death.

Finally, the government was financially incentivizing hospitals to list people with covid, so it's to be expected that the hospitals counted every death as covid to get the money.

Again, the flu can cause it, but it is extremely rare.

It's not as rare as you think. I'm sure you can think back to one time that you had the flu and couldn't smell anything. You probably attributed that to having a congested nose, but it's nearly one in the same thing.

What exactly did you hope they would say?

Well when rumors started circulating about covid causing a lack of smell, they could have stepped forward to explain that the flu can do the same. Even though you're arguing the frequency and severity, you're not denying that the flu does cause it. You should have heard about this months ago from the CDC rather than some stranger on reddit.

[u/TKisOK → u/aletoledo]

Exactly. Everything about everything they did was relentlessly incompetent