coronavirus, with some facing a seemingly long-term inability to smell."Anosmia cuts you off from the smells of life, it's a torture," says Maillard, president of anosmie.org, a French group designed to help sufferers.If you have the condition you can no longer breathe in the smell of your first morning coffee, smell the cut grass of a freshly mown lawn or even "the reassuring smell of soap on your skin when you're preparing for a meeting", he says.You only truly become aware of your sense of smell when you lose it, says Maillard, who lost his own following an accident.And it is not just the olfactory pleasures you lose.