By Dan Murphy
Are there any other ways to determine if you have the Coronavirus other than the fever, flulike symptoms and stomach aches that all of us hope not to have? Noted author Michael Lewis has a suggestion, your sense of smell.
Lewis, who has authored several award winning books that have also become movies, “Moneyball” and “Liar’s Poker,” explained the latest theory, which claims that if you can still smell the good and bad around you, then you don’t have COVID-19.
“Two British doctors. Claire Hopkins and Nirmal Kumar, among the country’s most prominent ear, nose and throat specialists, had both noticed the same odd symptom in their coronavirus patients: a loss of the sense of smell,” writes Lewis. The medical term for a loss of the sense of smell is Anosmia.
In a letter to the medical community across the globe, Dr.’s Hopkins and Kumar write, “There is already good evidence from South Korea, China and Italy that significant numbers of patients with proven COVID-19 infection have developed anosmia/hyposmia. In Germany it is reported that more than 2 in 3 confirmed cases have anosmia. In South Korea, where testing has been more widespread, 30% of patients testing positive have had anosmia as their major presenting symptom in otherwise mild cases.
“In addition, there have been a rapidly growing number of reports of a significant increase in the number of patients presenting with anosmia in the absence of other symptoms – this has been widely shared on medical discussion boards by surgeons from all regions managing a high incidence of cases. Iran has reported a sudden increase in cases of isolated anosmia, and many colleagues from the US, France and Northern Italy have the same experience.
“I have personally seen four patients this week, all under 40, and otherwise asymptomatic except for the recent onset of anosmia – I usually see roughly no more than one a month. I think these patients may be some of the hitherto hidden carriers that have facilitated the rapid spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, these patients do not meet current criteria for testing or self isolation,” writes Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Kumar.
Dr. Kumar added that “In the past it was once in a blue moon that we saw patients who had lost their sense of smell. Now we are seeing it 10 times as often. It’s one of the things that happens with this virus.” After totaling up their own totals of coronavirus patients and those who lost their sense of smell, 80% were a match, that is, those who lost their sense of smell and who also tested positive.
This medical observation, while non-conclusive, could be used as a way to determine if some of us have the virus but can’t be tested, either due to a lack of tests, or that we don’t feel ill enough to go to the hospital and get tested. The theory was that those who lost their sense of smell could sound the alarm in their community, and it might be used to test people earlier in those communities and hopefully, stop the spread.
Lewis, through his friends on Wall Street, suggested that through a storm of social media activity, the world could be notified to report their findings if they suddenly have lost their sense of smell. Make an attempt in some way, to go ‘Viral with the Virus,” as Lewis puts it.
If enough of the famous, or to some infamous, bloggers and YouTubers online were to get behind the idea, the medical and scientific community could compile the data and track the virus in a way other than the current slow way we do it now—to wait for a test to finally make its way to the public at large who to the best of their knowledge are not infected.
That will be the only way that we finally return to a small sense of normalcy, if all of us get tested, including but hopefully not a large number of us who are asymptomatic, and are carrying the virus but without any symptoms.
Lewis’ Wall Street friend, Peter Hancock, has started a website, sniffoutcovid.org. Check it out and spread the word about the easiest way to know you are healthy when you get up every morning. Smell the Roses and enjoy your day!
