How to handle with a cold

Secretary of Health and Human Services showing how to cough

When you feel a sneeze or a cough coming on, covering your mouth prevents the spread of infectious germs. You might have known that.

But the way you cover your mouth also matters. There are plenty of people who have not yet heard the guidance of health officials. If no tissue is available, you should aim your cough or sneeze into your elbow, not your hand. Even if that means breaking a long-held habit.

Germs are in respiratory droplets. Sneezing and coughing transmit them. Trouble starts when they land on your hands.

Here is what happens when somebody sneezes or coughs into their hands. It creates an opportunity to pass germs on to other people. Hands can contaminate other objects. The things that people touch like doorknobs, elevator buttons, and other surfaces.

This not just nagging. Sneezing and coughing into your arm has become the suggestion of most health agencies. Even the New York City subway system run announcements. It asks riders to “cough or sneeze into the bend of your arm or use a tissue.”

This guidance has become official only in the last 10 to 15 years. That means that adults may have missed the advice. Children often learn the proper way to cough or sneeze in school.

Sometimes people call it the Count Dracula cough.

It makes you look like the count covering up his face with his cape.

The term “cough etiquette” first turned up in 2000. It became a suggestion to sneeze into your arm in 2003. That is when SARS virus fears were widespread. It became more famous in 2009 when the H1N1 swine flu pandemic struck the United States.

Coughing into your elbow does not end all risk. But it is the best tactic available. Reducing the amount of particles flying through the air can help reduce the spread of germs.

Health officials keep saying, “Make sure you wash your hands.” An expert said, “Hand washing is one of the most important things people can do to keep healthy.”

Source: The New York Times February 27, 2018