Covid anniversary edition - on vaccines and anosmia.
This week last year I had a mild headache – the sort of headache you get if you didn’t drink enough fluid or had worked a bit hard that day. I’d been to a very good yoga class on the Tuesday and the muscle ache was the sort of good feeling you get the day after, when you feel your muscles growing, and you just know that your downward facing dog will be straight out of a YouTube video by next week.
It was only when the jelly babies I was eating tasted of nothing that I finally realised that these symptoms weren’t just from hard work, and my down dog would be unchanged, but I had contracted COVID-19. Like most of the health workers I know, I didn’t catch it from my patients, but from either colleagues or friends, or from a theatre performance I attended the previous week.
Those people who know me will have heard me complain about the anosmia – or lack of sense of smell – that seems to be one of the most common symptoms of coronavirus. It’s so strange not being able to taste the difference between lemon juice and vinegar, everything you eat tastes of nothing, although I always kept the basic flavours of salt, sour, sweet and bitter.
Losing your sense of smell makes you realise how much you rely on it. Is the food fully cooked? Does the bread smell of mould? Is the milk off? More dangerously I’d forget something cooking in the oven and not smell the acrid cremation of what was supposed to be dinner, and at one point I developed two days of gut rot following the ingestion of some dodgy prawns that I’m sure I would have avoided had I been able to smell them properly.
I thought my loss of smell would last a couple of days, but then weeks later there was still nothing. Thankfully it did start improving, and the first cup of coffee that I could taste was heavenly (although the industrial strength espresso I have tasted like the mildest gateway-drug coffee). Today, exactly a year later, it’s still not back to normal, but good enough to enjoy food and to be able to smell the off milk. Every day I still notice improvements, which make me happy, and give me optimism that eventually all will be normal and I’ll enjoy the smell of spring in the air.
Those of you who follow me on twitter will know that this week the furore over the suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine by many European countries has made my blood boil. The report of thromboses from Norway and Germany and the way individual countries have defied directives from the European Medicines Agency defy logic. For those countries with currently low transmission rates I suppose a brief halt is justifiable, but France, Germany, and many other central and east European countries are experiencing another surge, and I’m absolutely certain that the decision to slow their vaccination campaign will cost hundreds, if not thousands of lives.
After three months on the intensive care unit, things are getting quieter now, thanks to the combination of the incredible UK vaccination campaign, and lockdown. The coverage of the AstraZeneca vaccine has made many people nervous, and I have heard hospital staff be reluctant to come forward out of fear of side effects, or think that because they previously had covid they are immune.
I have come across many colleagues now who’ve had COVID-19 twice, often with different but still severe symptoms, and our natural immunity seems to wane after about six months or so. The vaccine has also been shown to cut transmission of covid, and when we treat patients, or indeed simply speak to someone, we should make ourselves as safe for them as possible.
Please come forward and be vaccinated. It’s our way out of the mess and it’s already working! The UK is leading the way here, but we need everyone who can to come forward when they’re called. As for the side effects: I felt a bit sweaty after my first dose, and had a mild headache after the second dose. Even if I’d had more serious side effects I’d trade a few days of feeling rubbish for a year of being able to enjoy my food in a heartbeat. I was supposedly “lucky” to have got through covid with mild symptoms, but I’d much rather have had immunity with no infection.