In case you have not heard, there is a pandemic occurring. People are being hospitalized and even dying simply because it is flu season and they are not taking the proper precautions.
But what does flu season have to do with your shopping? More than you may like to think.
One day you suddenly fall ill; your feverish, you cannot keep any food down and your whole body hurts. No one in your house is sick, nor is anyone at work, so how did you get sick?
“Maybe it was someone at school,” you may think. “The girl two seats down from me did cough, yawn and put her head down.”
What about the other day when you went shopping (and consequently wandered through everyone else’s germs). When you picked up all those DVDs, read the backs then put them all back because you could not make up your mind.
Little did you know, but before you picked up those DVDs, another customer had just been there — coughing. Everyone gets sick and we all know our lives do not always allow us to stay home; but when this customer coughed, they did so carelessly NOT covering their mouth.
According to It’s A SNAP.org’s Clean Hand Statistics:
- There are many types of germs (viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi) that cause many types of illnesses – including the common cold or flu, food borne illness, Lyme disease, hantavirus, or plague. These germs can spread easily from one person to another – and have wide-reaching effects.
- One of the most common ways people catch colds is by rubbing their noses or eyes after touching someone or something that’s contaminated with the cold virus (rhinovirus).
- Rotavirus – a germ that causes gastrointestinal illness – can be transferred from a dry, smooth surface to a clean hand for as long as 20 minutes after the surface has been contaminated.
- The 15 leading causes of death in the US for 2006 include influenza and pneumonia.
Your germs are discussing, in the end even you do not want them. Why carelessly disperse them around town then? Where did your manors go? If your fever is so high that you cannot remember to cover your mouth when you cough (a skill which you were thought when you were two), then 
maybe you need to find your way to a hospital bed.
Infection Control Today reported in their article in Dec. 2003 that, “Most people (73 %) know that a common cold can spread by coughing. Far fewer people recognize that more serious illnesses — such as the flu (57 %) and bronchitis (27 %) — can also spread through coughing. In reality, the flu and bronchitis are spread more often through coughing than sneezing. However, most people (71%) consider their average cough to be simply a mild problem or annoyance, and seek treatment either rarely or not at all. By not taking their cough seriously, these people are likely spreading their infection to others.”
So now when you go out all shopping and you have that terrible or minor cough or even flu-ish symptoms, hopefully you will keep in mind mankind and your fellow shoppers and will cover your mouth when you cough.
No one likes being sick and people especially do not like getting sick. So save someone else your pain and if you go out while under the weather, cover your mouth when you cough.
Customer Critique 