Man Unsure If He Lost Sense Of Taste From Covid Or Just Eating McMenamins Food

Upon arriving home from a hike in Forest Park on Thursday, Ernesto Shivers saw a brown to-go box on the kitchen table with an accompanying note from his roommate. “I borrowed your Schwinn fixie and now it has a flat tire. I’m sorry, I’ll fix it. Here’s some food. Beer’s in a growler in the fridge.” ⁣
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Annoyed about his bike but famished from his hike, Shivers popped open the container to find a burger and tater tots. He began to dig in, and that’s where the confusion began. ⁣
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“I snarfed two big bites of the burger, but it didn’t taste like anything,” Shivers said. “I thought it might have been a veggie patty, but even those have some flavor. The texture was normal and I could tell that the tomatoes were cold, but that was about it. I tried the tots – they looked like they were dusted with some seasoning. They had some crunch but they too rang up zeroes in the flavor department.“⁣
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Remembering articles that he had read about a symptom of COVID-19 being loss of sense and smell, Shivers began to panic. “I poured myself a beer from the growler – surely I would taste some bitterness, tartness, something. That was when I really started to freak out. It had a normal light beer color, even a reddish glow, but it might as well have been Pamplemousse LaCroix. I couldn’t pick up one ounce of taste or aroma. I knew I had the virus.“⁣
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Shivers took his temperature, checked himself for other symptoms and called his roommate. He began contact tracing to figure out how he could have possibly gotten infected even though he was always so careful. His roommate answered the phone right as Shivers returned the growler to the fridge. “Hey man, I’ve got some bummer news. I’ve been infec–” he stopped suddenly. “Wait, does this growler say ‘Ruby?’ Like from McMenamins? Holy shit, it does! Thank God. False alarm, forget I called. This has all been a big misunderstanding. Now where’s the hot sauce?“⁣