Did I Forget How to Hands-Free?

Not only Covid ruined my World Championship in Roatan last august, it also left me with crippled ears.
In fact, I became completely unable to do hands-free for a long time after that. Note that while I was sick, I just had fever and throat ache, but zero congestion and I was never unable to equalise. I could pressure-equalise without any problem, just not hands-free. It was really puzzling and I started to think that maybe I just forgot how to do the actual movement that makes me equalise. In fact when I “clicked”, there was no click happening, just silence. I was going crazy.
This also impacted a lot my ability to do mouthfill efficiently, since I use almost no pressure to equalize with mouthfill, but I do (mostly) hands free on demand, i.e. I click every second or two, which is usually enough to keep my ears equalised. But then this wasn’t working anymore and I had to start to apply pressure, which added effort and mental strain and my deep dives became quite a bit harder because of that.

When I got back from Roatan my husband just got his new camera and I had to go diving with him several times so that he could try out his 53 different lenses. It was horrible as I couldnt even get a few meters down without pinching my nose. It felt like being a beginner again!
This sad state of affairs was already going on for about 6 weeks, when I happened to talk to Federico Mana, mouthfill master and overall a very cool person and freediver (except for his atrocious English accent- I know he’s saying the same about my atrocious Italian, so we are even). He told me that he talked to many other freedivers who also lost their ability to hands free after stupid Covid! At this point it didn’t really feel that much more comforting knowing that I wasn’t alone, as my equalisation still sucked the same even if I had company. I thought maybe that’s it and I can’t hands-free ever again.
Then a few weeks later, during one of my last days in Cyprus (while I was wasting time in the water doing nothing useful) I did a dive with my mask and I managed to get down to 13m without (almost) pinching my nose. Then I did another dive and even though I hurt both my left ear and my sinuses (duh! sometimes I’m stupider than a 5 year old) I got to 20 meters!
Thats when I got some hope back.

Theories as to why after covid some people can’t equalise hands-free? I can understand if someone get completely congested with cold, sinus infection, but I didn’t have that.
Federico guessed it’s dryness in the mucosa & nasopharynx passages. But why didn’t it affect also my Frenzel then? I have exactly zero answers to that but I’m happy it’s slowly coming back, because my days of pinching my nose especially in photos and videos are over since more than a decade and I simply refuse to be seen pinching my nose in public ever again!