A lot, considering we politicized the fuck out of that virus, which lead to global pushback against mitigating its spread and ultimately resulting in avoidable infections, unnecessary suffering, and senseless deaths. You're on the receiving end of that attack, so previous poster isn't wrong to include your personal suffering into the broader generalization of the covid dumpster fire as a whole.

That said, his delivery was shit, and he was wrong about the "You don't!" bit - you can absolutely retrain your senses. I've got nothing but heresay on the 'how' side of that though, so my advice would be to make an appointment with your doc and see if he or she can point you to an effective sensory therapy process.

And for real, good luck. I've gotten that shit twice now, and honestly losing taste was among my biggest fears. Food is one of the only things I can consistently look forward to on a daily basis... losing the ability to enjoy food would be depressing as fuck. Like literally, clinically depressing as fuck - food is a massive part of pretty much every culture, and our social events pretty much all revolve around food. Contrasted against the "it can kill you" side of covid, the taste and smell thing is kind of permanently out of the spot light, which doesn't do justice to the (albeit nonlethal) severity of that symptom.