Tag: Survivors

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A Century After the Titanic Sank, a Movie Tries to Rescue 6 Survivors’ Tales

A Century After the Titanic Sank, a Film Tries to Rescue 6 Survivors’ Stories

Much about the Chinese sailors’ lives was influenced by the currents of history, including their presence on the Titanic to begin with. Labor strikes in Britain had left them without work, so their employer reassigned them to a North American route. The Titanic was supposed to take eight sailors as third-class passengers from Southampton, England, to their new ship in New York.

When the liner struck an iceberg late on April 14, the eight men acted quickly. Five made it into lifeboats, but the other three fell into the subzero water with hundreds of others as the ship was swallowed by the sea.

Two of those three sailors, Lee Ling and Len Lam, are believed to have died in the water. The third, Fang Lang, clung to a piece of debris and waited until a single lifeboat returned to search for survivors, making him among the last to be saved.

Credit…Photo Courtesy of the Fong Family

Fang’s rescue was the inspiration for the end of the movie “Titanic,” and was even portrayed in a deleted scene. (Mr. Cameron, an executive producer of “The Six,” is interviewed in the film.) But for decades after the sinking, the Chinese survivors were painted by the ship’s owner and the news media in a negative light, which may have been one reason their story remained unknown even to some of their descendants.

As the liner sank, four of the men reached a crowded, but not full, lifeboat that included J. Bruce Ismay, the Titanic’s owner, who was later criticized for not going down with his ship. Speaking to investigators after the disaster, Mr. Ismay described the Chinese men as stowaways. News reports also accused them of dressing as women so their rescue would be prioritized.

Though the filmmakers planned to report whatever they discovered, “it turns out we didn’t find any direct evidence of them doing things they were accused of and there was a much better explanation,” said Arthur Jones, the Shanghai-based director of the film.

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Entertainment

Dramatizing the Chernobyl Catastrophe, for Its Survivors

Dramatizing the Chernobyl Disaster, for Its Survivors

Chernobyl, Ukraine – In April 1986, Alexander Rodnyansky was living in Kiev as a young documentary filmmaker. When the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded 60 miles north of the Ukrainian capital, most of the citizens of the Soviet Union were not informed. It took the government 18 days to reveal exactly what had happened, but Rodnyansky had filmed the disaster area from the day after the disaster.

What he witnessed after the Chernobyl explosion – and the Soviet government’s botched response to it – has haunted him ever since.

“It was probably one of the most important events in Soviet history and my personal history,” Rodnyansky said in a telephone interview.

Rodnyansky became an award-winning director, producer, and television manager. His long-term ambition to make a feature film about Chernobyl was fulfilled this year with the release of “Chernobyl 1986”, a historical drama that was supposed to focus on the lives of the people who were known as the “liquidators” and who prevented them The fire spread to the other reactors, preventing an even greater catastrophe.

The film, which recently appeared on Netflix in the US, follows the critically acclaimed HBO 2019 miniseries “Chernobyl,” which received critical acclaim for its focus on the failures of the Soviet system.

Chernobyl 1986, which was partially funded by the Russian state, has received some criticism in Russia and Ukraine for failing to emphasize the government’s missteps to the same degree. But Rodnyansky said that was never his intention. When he saw the HBO series twice, his film was already in production and he wanted it to focus on the people directly affected by the disaster.

“For years people have been talking about what really happened there, especially after the Soviet Union collapsed and the media was absolutely free,” Rodnyansky said, adding that most people understand what happened in Chernobyl a Failure of the Soviet system was. Everyone involved in the disaster was a victim, he said – “they were hostages to this system”.

While the HBO approach has been to analyze systemic flaws in the Soviet system that led to the disaster, Russian film does something familiar with the country’s cultural tradition: emphasis on the role of the individual, the people’s personal heroism and the Commitments to a higher cause.

Before the disaster, Rodnyansky had “lived a fairly stable life, and then something happened that made me think about the system, that does not allow people to know about the disaster that can kill hundreds of thousands – this is not a fair system , “He said, referring to the government’s silence immediately after the explosion.

Thirty-five years later, Rodnyansky said it was clear that the Chernobyl explosion was one of the major events that led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It “changed the perception of life, the system and the country,” he said and made “many Ukrainians, if not the majority, reflect on Moscow’s responsibility and the need for Ukraine’s independence.”

Today the power plant site has fewer than 2,000 workers waiting a huge sarcophagus over the site to ensure that no nuclear waste is released. This month Ukraine celebrates the 30th anniversary of its independence from the Soviet Union. The anniversary comes as the country tries to defend itself against Russia after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported separatist militants in eastern Ukraine.

Although the shooting of this film had a special resonance for Rodnyansky, he has dealt with epic historical films before: In 2013 he produced the film “Stalingrad”, a love story that takes place in the battle of the same name in World War II, and “Leviathan” . which was awarded as the best screenplay in Cannes in 2014.

In 2015 he got the script for “Chernobyl 1986” and sent it to Danila Kozlovsky, a prominent director and actress who was on the set of the film “Vikings” at the time.

Kozlovsky, who was born the year before the nuclear disaster, was initially dismissive. But in a telephone interview, he said the more he read the script, “the more I understood that this was an incredible event that shaped the history of our country, which is still a rather complex subject.”

In the film he plays the protagonist Aleksei, a fireman and bon vivant. When Aleksei meets a former girlfriend in Pripyat, where most of the people who worked in the Chernobyl facility lived, he learns that he has a 10-year-old son. Despite being interested in his son and ex-partner, he makes promises he doesn’t keep until he and his fellow firefighters are dragged into the horror and devastation of the blast.

“For me it was important not just to make another pseudo-documentary fiction film,” said the actor, but to tell the story “of how this catastrophe broke into the life of an ordinary family”.

Kozlovsky said he spent a year meeting former liquidators and displaced persons from the Chernobyl area in preparation for the role. As a sign of the political change in the former Soviet state since the disaster, Kozlovsky was unable to visit the protected 1,000 square mile Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where the reactors and the abandoned city of Pripyat are located, because Russian men of military age are among the countries entering Ukraine ongoing conflict.

The film dedicated to the liquidators struck a nerve in some people who survived efforts to prevent further explosions and then clean up the radiation-contaminated area. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 240,000 people were involved in the cleanup in 1986 and 1987.

Oleg Ivanovich Genrikh was one of those people. He was working in the fourth reactor when it exploded, and today he makes regular appearances in documentaries and speaks to student groups to make sure younger people understand the gravity of what is happening.

The 62-year-old said he was delighted that the new Russia-produced drama explores the disaster through the experience of one of the people who came to see the disaster.

“It is important that the film shows the fate of a person who has shown his love and commitment to his profession,” he said in a telephone interview and remembered his fight against the fires not only because of the environmental crisis that could arise, but also because his wife and two young daughters lived nearby.

“I know for sure that we did everything that night to protect our city, which was three kilometers from our train station,” he said. “And we understood that our families, our loved ones, our children were in danger.”

Ivan Nechepurenko contributed the reporting from Moscow.

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World News

9/11 households, survivors ask Biden to not attend memorial occasions over Saudi docs

9/11 families, survivors ask Biden not to attend memorial events over Saudi docs

Nearly 1,800 9/11 survivors, victims’ family members and first responders are telling President Joe Biden that he should skip memorial events this year unless he declassifies U.S. documents detailing Saudi Arabia’s role in the deadly attacks. 

Next month will mark 20 years since the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

The group argued that Biden has failed to fulfill his campaign promise to release as much information as possible on the attacks and has ignored their numerous letters and requests that called on him to do so. 

“Twenty years later, there is simply no reason — unmerited claims of ‘national security’ or otherwise — to keep this information secret,” the group said in their statement. 

“But if President Biden reneges on his commitment and sides with the Saudi government, we would be compelled to publicly stand in objection to any participation by his administration in any memorial ceremony of 9/11,” the group said.

A White House spokesperson said in a statement that its Office of Public Engagement and National Security Council staff have met with 9/11 victims’ family members to discuss their requests for documents and “hear their thoughts on policy priorities,” NBC News reported Friday.

In his campaign promise, Biden pledged to direct his Department of Justice to examine cases where the disclosure of FBI information related to the 9/11 attacks is recommended. He said that releasing such information would be “narrowly tailored” to protect against the risk of harm to national security. 

“I intend to be a President for all Americans, and will hear all of their voices,” Biden said. “The 9/11 Families are right to seek full truth and accountability.”

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The group said they had “great hopes” that Biden would diverge from previous administrations and said they were disappointed that he did not live up to his words after his inauguration.

They said that since the 9/11 Commission investigation concluded, in 2004, there has been investigative evidence found “implicating Saudi government officials” in supporting the attacks. 

The 9/11 Commission found it likely that Saudi government-funded charities supported the attacks but did not find any evidence of direct funding from the government, according to NBC News. 

The group particularly called for the release of FBI documents from a 2016 investigation of Saudi Arabia. They said they believe the documents would reveal whether any individuals associated with al Qaeda, the group that carried out the terrorist attacks, received assistance or financing from the Saudi Arabian government. 

Fifteen of the 19 attackers in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi citizens, and mastermind Osama Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, but the country’s government has denied allegations that it was involved.

Multiple presidential administrations have cited “security concerns” in their reasoning for withholding documents related to the terrorist attacks, the group’s statement said. 

Most recently, the Trump administration invoked the state secrets privilege in 2019 to justify keeping documents classified, according to NBC News.

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Health

Covid Survivors Scent Meals Otherwise

Covid Survivors Smell Foods Differently

“There are daily reports of recovery from long-distance drivers in terms of improvement in parosmia and fairly good sense of smell in patients,” said Professor Hopkins.

Ms. Viegut, 25, fears that she may not be able to detect a gas leak or fire. That’s a real risk, as shown by the experience of a family in Waco, Texas in January who didn’t realize their home was on fire. Almost all members had lost their sense of smell because of Covid; they escaped, but the house was destroyed.

Parosmia is one of several Covid-related problems related to smell and taste. Partial or complete loss of smell or anosmia is often the first symptom of the coronavirus. Loss of taste or ageusia can also be a symptom.

Prior to Covid, parosmia received relatively little attention, said Nancy E. Rawson, vice president and assistant director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, an internationally renowned nonprofit research group.

“We’d have a big conference and one of the doctors could have a case or two,” said Dr. Rawson.

In a French study from early 2005, the majority of the 56 cases examined were attributed to upper respiratory tract infections.

Today, scientists can point to more than 100 reasons for odor loss and distortion, including viruses, sinusitis, head trauma, chemotherapy, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, said Dr. Zara M. Patel, associate professor of ENT medicine at Stanford University and director of endoscopic skull base surgery.

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Entertainment

A Movie Tries to Make a Distinction for Home Violence Survivors

A Film Tries to Make a Difference for Domestic Violence Survivors

In 2013, Tanisha Davis, a 26-year-old woman from Rochester, NY, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for killing her boyfriend and a beating the night he died. The judge agreed that she was a victim of domestic violence, but said that her response deserves no indulgence. “You handled the situation completely wrong,” he told her. “You could have left.”

In 2021, the same judge dismissed Davis on a new law that allowed domestic violence survivors to have more nuanced consideration in the courts, thanks in part to a documentary that helped shape their case.

It is not uncommon for documentary projects to have an impact on legal proceedings once they have found an audience and built public attention. But the film that Davis helped, “And So I Stayed,” wasn’t out yet – it wasn’t even finished – when filmmakers Natalie Pattillo and Daniel A. Nelson put together a short video for the court of them described their lives.

“You could see how strong the bonds she had with her family and the strength of the support she would have” if she were released, said Angela N. Ellis, one of her lawyers. The prosecutor and the judge both mentioned that they were watching the footage when they agreed to release her in March.

During her eight years in prison, Davis, 34, spoke to her son, who is now 15, every day. Now that she is at home, “I can just call him in the next room,” she said. “I can’t even explain this joy. I cry tears of joy all the time. “

For the filmmakers, it was an unexpectedly bright ending to an often heartbreaking and unsettling film. And So I Stayed, which premieres Saturday at the Brooklyn Film Festival (online until June 13), is personal for Pattillo, who is a survivor herself and whose sister was killed by a friend in 2010. The documentary grew out of her graduation project at Columbia Journalism School, where she met Nelson, her co-director.

“I didn’t realize how common it is that women are imprisoned for defending themselves or their children,” said Pattillo. “When I found out, I couldn’t stop reporting” to show how misunderstood and punitive these cases are within the judicial system.

The film’s first focus was on Kim Dadou Brown, who spent 17 years in prison for killing her violent boyfriend. She became a lawyer and traveled to Albany to brief New York lawmakers on the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, the long-smoldering piece of legislation that eventually helped free Davis. Introduced in 2011, it was finally passed in 2019 after the Democrats flipped the state senate.

The law is one of the few laws in the country that gives judges more leniency in convicting victims of domestic violence who commit crimes against their perpetrators. It follows a growing, research-based understanding of the patterns of abusive relationships and the unique impact they have on the people in them.

“Leaving is the hardest part,” and the most dangerous, said Dadou Brown. “I thought all men were hitting and I stuck with mine so I knew which way the hitting would be coming.”

After Dadou Brown, a Rochester native and former healthcare worker, was paroled in 2008, she volunteered with survivors and crossed the state for rallies – even when money was tight because her felony status made it difficult to find jobs, she said. With 17 earrings (one for each year of imprisonment) and her signature false eyelashes, “she’s just a force,” said Pattillo. “It’s sheer tenacity. This is Kim. “

When the bill was passed, there was high spirits among its supporters and filmmakers. But they left their cameras on.

One case considered a surefire test of the crime was that of Nicole Addimando, a young mother of two in Poughkeepsie, NY, who fatally shot and killed Christopher Grover, her living friend and father of the children, in 2017. The film contains footage from police cameras the night she was found disoriented and driving around in the early hours of the morning with her 4 and 2 year olds in the backseat.

Her case made national headlines for the severity of the abuse she allegedly suffered: bites and blue eyes; Bruises and burns on her body, including during pregnancy, that have been documented by doctors; Rapes that Grover videotaped and uploaded to a porn site. In the film, a social worker calls it not just assault, but “sexual torture”. In 2020, Addimando was sentenced to 19 years of life imprisonment for second degree manslaughter; the judge contested the applicability of the Survivor Justice Act.

“I felt like we let them down,” said Dadou Brown, who was at the conviction.

In the film, Addimando can mainly be heard as the voice on the phone from prison; with a phone call, her mother tries to comfort her that she is at least still alive, that she has escaped being mistreated. “I’m still not free,” she replies, crying.

While there are no statewide statistics on the number of women incarcerated who have defended themselves against abusers, federal research suggests that around half of women in jail have experienced physical abuse or sexual violence, most from romantic partners. Black women are disproportionately harassed by both intimate partner violence and the judicial system: they are most often killed by a romantic partner and more likely to end up in prison, according to Bernadine Waller, a researcher at Adelphi University.

According to Nelson, the filmmaker, bringing stories like this to the screen is not about questioning the triggers, but rather about contextualizing the convicts. “The legal system forces you to create the perfect victim,” he said, “and a prosecutor will do everything in his power to characterize a survivor so that he does not fit in that box.” (In Addimando’s case, the judge said she “reluctantly consented” to the sexual abuse.)

Garrard Beeney, an Addimando attorney pending a decision on her appeal, said the investigation into the documentary into the judiciary’s handling of survivors was “a necessary but, in my opinion, not sufficient step” to change the process . Police, prosecutors and judges need training to think about domestic violence, he said. “We need this type of retraining more urgently than a gradual process of understanding.”

For Pattillo, who had two of her three children while filming, a few moments felt overwhelmingly raw. “There is always survivor’s fault when dealing with trauma,” she said, adding, referring to Addimando, “Why was I fine and not Nikki? Why don’t you take care of your children every night? “

But it is also “very healing,” she added, “to have helped survivors feel seen, heard and believed through this film.”

It originally ended on a dark note, at a vigil for Addimando. Then came the Davis case. The filmmakers were there on the day she was released from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Getting used to the outdoors again – during a pandemic – is still a challenge, Davis said last week. But she wanted her story to be told as a warning to the victims and as a beacon. The filmmakers plan to make the documentary available to the legal system – “a toolkit,” Nelson said on how to apply the new law.

Dadou Brown was also in Bedford Hills; she drove Davis’ family there. Her advocacy, said Dadou Brown, has become her life’s work. “I’m so happy to have so many dream moments,” she said. “Even when I come home from prison. My next dream will come true, to bring Nikki home. “

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Health

1 in three Covid survivors suffers neurological or psychological problems: examine

1 in 3 Covid survivors suffers neurological or mental disorders: study

Reyes Magana, Teamsters Local’s 848 business agent, will be tested for COVID-19 at a test site provided by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on July 16, 2020 in Long Beach, California.

Mario Tama | Getty Images

One in three Covid-19 survivors has suffered a neurological or psychiatric disorder within six months of being infected with the virus. This was estimated in an observational study of more than 230,000 patient records.

The study, published Tuesday in the Lancet Psychiatry Journal, analyzed data from the electronic health records of 236,379 Covid-19 patients from the US-based TriNetX network, which includes more than 81 million people.

This group was compared to 105,579 patients diagnosed with influenza and 236,038 patients diagnosed with respiratory infection (including influenza).

Overall, the estimated incidence of a diagnosis of a neurological or mental disorder after Covid-19 infection was 34%. This was the result of a study by researchers at Oxford University who examined 14 neurological and mental illnesses.

For 13% of these people, it was their first recorded neurological or psychiatric diagnosis.

The most common diagnoses after the coronavirus were anxiety disorders (17% of patients), mood disorders (14%), substance abuse disorders (7%), and insomnia (5%). The incidence of neurological outcomes was lower, including 0.6% for cerebral hemorrhage, 2.1% for ischemic stroke, and 0.7% for dementia.

Taking into account the underlying health characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity and existing health conditions, there was an overall 44% higher risk of neurological and mental health diagnoses after Covid-19 than after flu and after Covid a 16% higher risk -19 than after Respiratory infections.

Since the coronavirus first appeared in China in late 2019, over 132 million cases of the virus and over 2.8 million deaths have been reported, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Professor Paul Harrison, lead author of the study in the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University, said the latest study underscores the need to equip health systems to potentially cope with higher numbers of neurological disorders in survivors of the virus.

“These are real data from a large number of patients. They confirm the high rates of psychiatric diagnoses after Covid-19 and show that serious disorders of the nervous system (such as stroke and dementia) also occur. especially in patients with severe Covid-19, “he noted.

“Although the individual risks for most diseases are small, the impact on the health and welfare systems of the population as a whole can be significant because of the scale of the pandemic and the fact that many of these diseases are chronic. As a result, health systems must do so . ” Provide funds to meet anticipated needs within both primary and secondary care. “

Dr. Max Taquet, co-author of the Oxford University study, said more research needed to be done to see “what happens after six months”.

“The study fails to uncover the mechanisms involved, but it does indicate the need for urgent research to identify them in order to prevent or treat them.”

Since the pandemic emerged worldwide in spring 2020, numerous studies have been conducted into the short and long-term effects of the virus. Oxford University’s Psychiatry Department noted that there was growing concern that survivors could be at increased risk for neurological disorders.

“A previous observational study by the same research group reported that Covid-19 survivors were at increased risk of mood and anxiety disorders in the first three months after infection. However, there is no extensive data yet investigating the risks of neurological and psychiatric diagnoses in the six months after the Covid-19 infection, “said the department.

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What Defines Home Abuse? Survivors Say It’s Extra Than Assault

What Defines Domestic Abuse? Survivors Say It’s More Than Assault

As destructive as these behaviors may be, they are not often viewed as inappropriate by law enforcement or the courts, adding to the belief that victims must be beaten and hospitalized before their accounts can be taken seriously. Doubts about how the judicial system would treat them are not unfounded: around 88 percent of the survivors surveyed by the ACLU said the police did not believe them or held them responsible for the abuse.

The new laws to combat compulsive behavior have raised some concerns from advocates who fear that – in trials that local lawyers claim are already piled up against survivors – the standard of evidence may be too high, especially when officials don’t have the Tools are in place to identify and prove patterns of risky behavior. “Researchers understand obsessional control as something that can help predict the outcome of a dangerous situation that will become fatal,” said Rachel Louise Snyder, author of “No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us.” “But she added,” Law enforcement doesn’t necessarily recognize that. “

While coercive control has been illegal in England and Wales since 2015, 2018 saw the largest number of domestic violence-related homicides in five years, according to the BBC. The Center for Women’s Justice, a UK surveillance group, filed complaints in 2019 and 2020 alleging a “systematic failure” by the police to protect victims. “The officers on site do not understand the coercive control,” said Harriet Wistrich, the center’s director. Although some training was provided, she stressed that the police, social workers, and courts must have a common understanding of how emotional abuse can become criminal for the law to be most effective.

Others fear that the passing and enforcement of new laws in the United States could draw resources from urgent logistical needs of survivors or from other avenues to justice. A growing number of proponents say the best answer is not with the criminal courts, with their racial and economic inequalities, but with dialogue-based alternatives like restorative justice.

Judy Harris Kluger, a retired New York judge who is the executive director of the nonprofit Sanctuary for Families, agreed that coercive control is important as a concept. As a judge, however, she said, “I would rather put energy into enforcing the laws we have,” she said, “but focus on other things besides litigation to combat domestic violence,” such as funding prevention, Housing and employment programs for survivors.

Proponents say, however, that legal recognition of the harmfulness of the problem will make the fight easier – and will help force a reckoning of its spread.

You point to Scotland as a potential model. Domestic abuse laws passed in 2019 focus on coercive control and include funding for training. Much of the police and support staff have taken compulsory courses to understand the problem, said Detective Superintendent Debbie Forrester, Police Scotland’s director of domestic violence. The judiciary also received lessons. In addition to a public campaign in which it was declared that the control of the behavior is illegal, the authorities made the perpetrators aware that they were being scrutinized: “We will talk to previous partners,” warned a police statement.

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Health

6 Months Later, Covid Survivors Stricken by Well being Issues

6 Months Later, Covid Survivors Plagued by Health Problems

Most of the symptoms in the Wuhan report were slightly more common in women. 81 percent reported at least one health problem, compared with 73 percent for men.

Reports of other respiratory illnesses like the 2003 outbreak of SARS, another type of coronavirus, suggest that some Covid survivors may experience after-effects for months or years. Most SARS patients recovered physically, but the researchers found that many had “worrying depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic symptoms” a year later.

Commenting on the Lancet study, researchers from Italy wrote that 38 percent of SARS survivors had decreased the flow of oxygen from their lungs 15 years later, adding that “Evidence of previous coronavirus outbreaks suggests some degree Lung damage could persist ”.

While people hospitalized for Covid may have more serious or prolonged physical problems, increasing evidence shows that even people who have never been hospitalized may have residual symptoms. Many of these patients seek care in the post-Covid clinics in the United States.

A recent survey by a patient-led research team included 3,762 participants, mostly women, from 56 countries, most of whom had not been hospitalized. Nearly two-thirds said they had symptoms for at least six months, with most saying they were tired and their symptoms got worse after physical or mental exertion, the report, which was not peer-reviewed. More than half of those affected said they had “cognitive dysfunction” with brain fog or difficulty thinking or concentrating.

Dr. Peluso noted that most Wuhan patients were hospitalized in the first half of 2020 and most were not treated with newer therapies like remdesivir or dexamethasone. It is therefore unclear whether people who received these treatments would now receive the same level of long-term term complications.

Even so, he and other doctors said the study’s portrait of persistent symptoms is true. Dr. Ferrante said that in the post-Covid recovery program where she treats patients, “pretty much everyone I see reports impaired physical or cognitive function, or both.”

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Some Covid Survivors Haunted by Lack of Scent and Style

Some Covid Survivors Haunted by Loss of Smell and Taste

Michele Miller of Bayside, NY, was infected with the coronavirus in March and has not smelled anything since. Recently, her husband and daughter stormed her home and said the kitchen was filling up with gas.

She had no idea. “It’s one thing not to smell and taste, but that is survival,” Ms. Miller said.

People are constantly scanning their surroundings for smells that signal change and possible damage, although the process is not always aware of it, said Dr. Dalton of the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

Smell makes the brain aware of everyday things, like dirty clothes, and things that are risky, such as spoiled food. Without this kind of recognition, “people worry about things,” said Dr. Dalton.

Worse still, some Covid-19 survivors are plagued by phantom odors that are unpleasant and often harmful, such as the smell of burning plastic, ammonia, or feces, a distortion called parosmia.

Eric Reynolds, a 51-year-old probation officer in Santa Maria, California, lost his sense of smell when he signed Covid-19 in April. Now, he said, he often smells bad smells that he knows don’t exist. Diet drinks taste like dirt; Soap and detergent smell like standing water or ammonia.

“I can’t do the dishes, it makes me choke,” said Mr. Reynolds. He is also haunted by phantom scents of corn chips and what he calls the “old lady’s perfume scent”.

It’s not uncommon for patients like him to develop food intolerances due to their distorted perceptions, said Dr. Evan R. Reiter, medical director of the Smell and Taste Center at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has followed the recovery of approximately 2,000 Covid-19 patients who have lost their sense of smell.