There's a physical aspect as well as a mental aspect to it. Media is constantly feeding you information about loss of smell (even though I've lost it at least a few times before with viruses).
I am very much in the skeptical camp when it comes to many things with COVID, and open to all sorts of arguments that the nature of the virus and treatments for it do not adhere to what you might call the "orthodox" perspective presented on CNN and enforced by Facebook and Twitter moderators with comms degrees. That said, while the nocebo effect is definitely a thing, my own experience with my first infection was different enough from any other illnesses to this point that I'm convinced these symptoms and their severity were not just a matter of media hype. My first sign of COVID was major conjunctivitis in one eye, which for about an hour was associated with enough pressure I thought I might need to go to urgent care. Then, I had been completely recovered for about a week after I was infected, thought I was over it completely, and then noticed I couldn't smell the family dog and the only thing I was still able to taste was pickles. It should at least be possible to acknowledge the novelty of these symptoms without worrying that they make any sort of case for the propriety of the response or the encouragement of the public to treat SARS-CoV-2 like a virus from a zombie movie.
A friend of mine also lost his sense of smell for weeks, he also found that he absolutely hated the taste of hot coffee for months (cold brew didn't bother him)
My original one was simply that anecdotal accounts of loss of smell didn't seem to pan out to a significant difference in frequency compared to other common cold and flu's.
I could buy that maybe COVID had "some effect on smell" at about the same rate as the common viruses, but it was the intensity which made it more noticeable.
That's definitely possible, I was only talking about frequency. Intensity is a tricky one to track because it can only be based on self-report studies, and you only hav a frame of reference if a previous illness at least partially knocked out your sense of smell.
My ex's kids turned off the freezer in my garage while playing (turned a knob they didn't understand) causing all the food to spoil and I didn't smell it because I couldn't smell it. Turns out it was the media's misinformation in my garage all along.
