Column by Austin Hill
Cover your mouth when you cough. Such an idea is simple in principle — when you cough, you cover your mouth, keeping your germs to yourself.
I was under the assumption most people were raised this way, with parents teaching children to use their hands to blanket their face when they sneezed or when they coughed, but I was gravely mistaken.
The world has been on high alert over the past several months as H1N1, more commonly known as the dreaded “swine flu,†has made its way from host to host.
When it first appeared, there were fatalities resulting from the virus, striking a panic in much of the population. Over time, the virus seems to have less effect, taking people out for a few days with symptoms similar to the common flu.
People have been buying hand sanitizer in record numbers, Lysol has flown off the shelves and, in many cases, people have missed work or class just trying to avoid this plague.
One of the main reasons is because you cannot count on others to keep their sickness to themselves, considering they seem to have forgotten basic manners. I respect anyone who gets sick and doesn’t call in. I can appreciate hard work — someone who perseveres through illness — it’s the sign of someone on a mission.
For many, though, the only mission is to spread their nonsense into the air — in their case, misery loves company. It drives me nuts, watching someone in a room full of people hacking and wheezing with their face exposed in the air, blowing their nose and laying the used Kleenex on the surface in front of them, passing their nonsense to the next person.
This isn’t rocket science, it’s a fundamental courtesy. Cover your face! I sat next to someone a couple of weeks ago who tried to share their flu with me.
When the mucus started coming up for air, I watched him look at the floor and let it rip. With no apologies, I gathered my belongings and moved a few seats down the aisle. What was comical was the expression on the guy’s face, as he looked at me as if I said something about his momma.
If I did say anything, I would tell her to teach her son how to properly use his disease-riddled hands to keep his colorful phlegm to himself. If she had done such a thing earlier in his life, as I suspect she did, I would ask her to follow her son around with a ruler and swat his hands each time he failed to place them to his mouth at such a proper occasion.
I wait tables and see many manners go by the wayside in adulthood. Some people talk with their mouths full of food, eat with their elbows on the table and are just rude to the core of their existence. I have accepted these things.
I understand wearing a hat to dinner does not make you a bad individual, it just makes some people look at you funny. The swine flu is no different.
Please pity people who are sick. Give them the sympathy you would expect to be shown. However, if one of these people insists on being like that monkey from the movie “Outbreak,†you must be responsive. This is for the better of the whole, and we cannot have an orgy of infection parading through the air. Tell them to exercise decency and shield you from their infection. Tell them to think of when they were 3 years old, or whenever it was they learned to say “please†and “thank you,†and ask them to remember the bit about face covering.
Speaking for myself and others who have not been infected, we wish to keep it that way. If you are one of the people who insist on trying to sideline me with your unfortunate condition, I warn you to be ready for an earful.
In fact, I encourage everyone to do the same.
The only way we can avoid illness in these crucial times is to look out for one another. Those who have it need not share it, and those who do not want it need to be protected. It is a give-and-take system, and I am one of the many who would rather not be given anything, nor have to take time to remind someone of common courtesy.
Austin Hill is an English senior. E-mail opinions@kykernel.com.
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