My parents both had it third week January 2020 before people really knew it was here. Dad was 94 then and got extremely ill and was hospitalized with pneumonia. They kept having to put him on oxygen at night which was baffling too back then. He was only there for 3 days however.
Mother insisted on staying with him constantly during his 3 days in hospital. She then became ill at home and some sort of cocktail got her over it. Again we had no idea they could have had Covid, it was too new and they’re in Lincoln, NE. Mom was 92 then.
Both of them lost their sense of taste for months. At least 3-4 and even after that things didn’t taste the same to them.
My father even though he was 94, he’s 95 now, was so stumped he didn’t bounce back as he had done years past. Well now we know why. My parents just don’t get ill. This I believe was brought in by relatives from Chicago visiting that Christmas 2019.
So their experience doesn’t fit the article.
I’m just hypothesizing here but a person in their 90s will require more time to mount an effective antibody response to the invading pathogen than a person in their 30s-40s due to thymic involution. Since it takes more time to respond to the invading pathogen, the invading pathogen has more time to do damage to the host. I wonder if they just had more of these olfactory cells killed and will, consequently, need more time to recover.
My own research has led me to the conclusion that the Chinese knew the covid had escaped the Wuhan lab somewhere around October 4th. It was probably circulating around China as early as September 2019, perhaps earlier. It was early enough to infect people in the United States at Thanksgiving 2019.
My nephew was hospitalized around that time with a persistent pneumonia. He was 12 years old at the time and fit as a fiddle. He’s bounced back well but it just came out of the blue as he has no other health problems whatsoever.
It hit my family in October last year. I had no loss of taste or smell. My daughter lost both for one day and it returned just as quick as it left. My son lost his taste until January and in March started getting his smell back. My daughters fiance lost his taste and smell, the taste came back quickly, but smell still hasn’t returned.