COVID-19: Smell the coffee? Anosmia? Coffee makes it more sweet, less bitter.

Kilauea erupted last night. Several people have texted to ask if we are OK and if the air here is OK. The media is probably reporting dramatically. To me here on the west side, everything seems just like any other day. We have felt a few short earthquakes in the past weeks, but that’s also not abnormal. I was hoping the big eruption in 2018 ended the decades of eruption and those in risky flow areas could feel safe, and blue skies and normal rain patterns would stay over here.

Changing subjects, I read an interesting article the other week. Coffee is Being Widely Used as a COVID-19 Diagnostic Tool.

The CDC now lists the loss of smell, known as anosmia, as one of the most common symptoms of COVID-19, with most recent studies indicating that about 50% to as much as 80% of people testing positive for the virus have suffered from anosmia.

Apparently doctors are asking people if they can smell the coffee. In spring a parent of a close friend of mine got COVID-19 pretty badly, hospitalized for weeks, with over a week in the ICU. I sent coffee to the parent once the parent’s health was in the clear, to celebrate a return to better health and to send a bit of Hawaii to the East Coast. At that time, anosmia wasn’t as well-known a symptom. The parent thanked me and said how wonderful it was to enjoy smelling our coffee as part of returning to good health.

This other article from April, also from Daily Coffee News, is about research that drinking coffee makes people more sensitive to sweet flavors and less sensitive to bitter. Wouldn’t it be nice if that also worked figuratively for life, too? Especially this past tough, challenging year. We’d all be coffee addicts. I’ll throw in one more link to another article, this one about liking vs. wanting/needing coffee, relating to addiction psychology.

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. The days will get longer from now on. Especially if you’re in a cold, dark area, you can drink our coffee and take in a bit of sweet, warm, sunny Hawaii’s ‘aina (land).