Just a guess based on “covid” and “candles”, a ton of people negatively reviewed candles for not smelling good/right/at all, not realizing they had lost their sense of smell from covid at the time.
I know my spouse had the realization our cold was covid because we couldn’t smell the candles we had bought (and smelled) the week before.
I had been a bit sick and I had the realization when I went to sniff some weed and I couldn’t smell it. I’d been able to smell earlier in the day and it was a weird realization. I went around and sniffed everything I could hoping to get a whiff
It was extremely bizarre. I’ve had muted sense of smell and taste because of a sickness but never an absence of the sense
The weird thing is also what happens to taste of you lose your sense of smell. You can still feel the texture of the food, but it doesn’t taste like much. One of the weirdest things I have experienced as a result of a virus.
For some reason vinegar, something I normally love, turned into this nasty acrid chemically taste and smell I can’t even begin to explain. It’s happened two times that I’ve lost my smell from covid.
I now give some ketchup a sniff as my early litmus test when I’m starting to get sick to check for covid lol.
I experimented with a bunch of foods and food-safe strong smelling/tasting things. Even spicy was knocked out which surprised me. I would have thought that would have remained unaffected
That was one of the few times in life I’ve really been concerned about my quality of life if the effects were permanent
Like, I’ve thought about “what if I lost my sight/hearing/limbs” but taste and smell never really occurred to me. But it was truly life altering and I really considered what I’d do if I didn’t get those senses back
Oh yeah that was absolutely affected as well. I couldn’t taste anything for a few days. I don’t remember specifically how long I couldn’t taste or smell, this was 4.5 years ago. That was the first time, early 2021. Subsequent bouts have not done that to me (unfortunately I work in an environment where people come in sick and pass it along. I’ve gotten covid many times and it makes me upset every time)
But yeah, eating became an even more unpleasant task. I pretty much do it because I have to but I try to make it enjoyable; but when you only have texture to work with then that becomes very difficult
Conversely I woke up in the middle of the night with a cold and couldn’t smell Vick’s VapoRub, which usually has an extremely strong menthol scent.
I got tested, talked to a doctor, and didn’t have COVID. It’s possible we lose our sense of smell sometimes with other types of colds too, but we never noticed because we didn’t panic about it.
Yankee candle rating dropped sharply (or at least statistically significant) during covid with reviews of them being negative because they had little to no smell.
Loss of smell being a covid symptom.
Edit: oh and yeah it would go up and down based on larger outbreaks. So it followed the early waves of mass outbreaks basically 1:1
My favourite is still and will always be the negative reviews on Amazon for Yankee candles correlating with Covid outbreaks.
What’s the story about that?
Just a guess based on “covid” and “candles”, a ton of people negatively reviewed candles for not smelling good/right/at all, not realizing they had lost their sense of smell from covid at the time.
I know my spouse had the realization our cold was covid because we couldn’t smell the candles we had bought (and smelled) the week before.
I had been a bit sick and I had the realization when I went to sniff some weed and I couldn’t smell it. I’d been able to smell earlier in the day and it was a weird realization. I went around and sniffed everything I could hoping to get a whiff
It was extremely bizarre. I’ve had muted sense of smell and taste because of a sickness but never an absence of the sense
The weird thing is also what happens to taste of you lose your sense of smell. You can still feel the texture of the food, but it doesn’t taste like much. One of the weirdest things I have experienced as a result of a virus.
I tried tasting vinegar to check if I still could, but nothing.
For some reason vinegar, something I normally love, turned into this nasty acrid chemically taste and smell I can’t even begin to explain. It’s happened two times that I’ve lost my smell from covid.
I now give some ketchup a sniff as my early litmus test when I’m starting to get sick to check for covid lol.
I experimented with a bunch of foods and food-safe strong smelling/tasting things. Even spicy was knocked out which surprised me. I would have thought that would have remained unaffected
That was one of the few times in life I’ve really been concerned about my quality of life if the effects were permanent
Like, I’ve thought about “what if I lost my sight/hearing/limbs” but taste and smell never really occurred to me. But it was truly life altering and I really considered what I’d do if I didn’t get those senses back
Oh yeah that was absolutely affected as well. I couldn’t taste anything for a few days. I don’t remember specifically how long I couldn’t taste or smell, this was 4.5 years ago. That was the first time, early 2021. Subsequent bouts have not done that to me (unfortunately I work in an environment where people come in sick and pass it along. I’ve gotten covid many times and it makes me upset every time)
But yeah, eating became an even more unpleasant task. I pretty much do it because I have to but I try to make it enjoyable; but when you only have texture to work with then that becomes very difficult
Conversely I woke up in the middle of the night with a cold and couldn’t smell Vick’s VapoRub, which usually has an extremely strong menthol scent.
I got tested, talked to a doctor, and didn’t have COVID. It’s possible we lose our sense of smell sometimes with other types of colds too, but we never noticed because we didn’t panic about it.
When was this? For the first year and a half or so, the more commonly used test kits had something like a 40% false negative rate.
I had this twice, the first time was at least 25 years ago.
I don’t recall. But I took the pharmacy test too, the more accurate one.
I realised I had it when I tried to drink my morning coffee and it tasted rancid because I had no smell
Yankee candle rating dropped sharply (or at least statistically significant) during covid with reviews of them being negative because they had little to no smell.
Loss of smell being a covid symptom.
Edit: oh and yeah it would go up and down based on larger outbreaks. So it followed the early waves of mass outbreaks basically 1:1
Which is wild in retrospect because holy shit they smell SO strongly.
What’s more surprising to me is that there’s a big enough stream of reviews for a candle to see this effect.
People are extremely opinionated on scented candles it seems.
You got some responses but here is an article about it https://www.newsweek.com/covid-scented-candles-reviews-1551248