Covid manners are gone, as doctors warn of flu-nami and horrible cough

We’re in the middle of a flu-nami, Covid is spiking and now there’s a horrible cough going around. So, why can’t people take a sickie, instead of spreading their germs?

Opinion: Just when you think you have won the golden ticket – an actual seat on the bus – you hear a sniff.

Then comes another sniff, or a cough. And another cough. And, then that’s it, you’re in full panic mode as you realise, ‘Oh God, I’m sitting next to an infectious person’.

We’ve all been there and for me it was this week and there’s nothing worse.

After that sinking feeling, comes the anger. Haven’t they heard about wfh, or perhaps a good old fashioned sickie? I mean where have all our Covid manners gone?

The obvious thing is to get up and move somewhere else. Easier said than done on my bus route, which is often standing room only.

Of course, moving would not only draw attention to me, but also to the sick person, although quite frankly they deserve to be sick-shamed.

Have we forgotten our Covid manners? Picture: John Gass

That’s not what happened. Instead, not wanting to cause a scene, I do some tutting and some angry Googling, if there is such a thing, otherwise I’ve just invented it.

I tap into my phone, ‘How not to get sick if you’re sitting next to a sick person on a really packed bus?’, or something like that.

Up comes a 2008 article and the advice from a professor from the University of Michigan Medical School is to remove yourself, and if that is not possible, “breathe shallowly”.

I try a bit of shallow breathing.

Meanwhile, the next article I pull up is one about how if it seems like everyone is sick at the moment, it’s not your imagination, published yesterday. It says NSW is swimming in a ‘respiratory bug soup’. There’s a flu-nami. Covid has gone rabid. And there’s a little-known infection that causes a persistent cough that can last for months.

I gulp, a shallow one of course.

With 1.5 million work days lost each year in Australia to flu, I, as a good community citizen, had my flu jab last month. I’ve got a Covid booster next week. And, so to anyone thinking about being a martyr and dragging themselves into work sick and in the process infecting all of Sydney, don’t. That’s so pre-2020. Stay at home, work from there if you have to. But just keep away from me.

Originally published as Covid manners are gone, as doctors warn of flu-nami and horrible cough