Since the vaccine only protects from severe disease, hospitalization, and death, I'm a bit concerned about the #covid19 symptom of loss/distortion of sense of taste & smell, which some people lost over 1 year ago and still haven't recovered. Is that still a high risk even to vaccinated people?
@resist1984 This is a good question. I'm more concerned about the reports of "brain fog" and trouble breathing a year after recovery. Nevertheless, if the vaccine can prevent severe disease and/or shorten the length of infection, then the chances of these complications are greatly reduced. Also, the main point of these vaccines is to reduce the spread of the virus so you never catch it in the first place.
@imgn once vaccinated I can still carry & transmit the virus, so i'll keep wearing the mask. But I thought there might be some low-risk situations where I'd forgo the mask, knowing that i'm willing to put up with some symptoms if it gets transmitted to me. OTOH taste/smell modification is a big quality of life hit if it lasts years, in which case i'd be more diligent to wear a mask.
@resist1984 Yeah, I'll keep wearing a mask and social distancing until the number of cases has returned to pre-pandemic levels (which could take a year, I hear).
By the way, I haven't looked at all the data from the clinical trials yet, but I bet they recorded all the symptoms from the participants, including loss/distortion of smell if that occurred.
@imgn there are also cases where the sense of smell isn't lost, but rather modified so for example an orange smells like rotting flesh or feces. My search is coming up dry on that though, so maybe these are rare enough symptoms to be negligable.