In Fear Of A Need To Sniffle.

A new norm indeed.

Early afternoon I drove along to our doctor's in order to pick up medication for one of our villagers.  Lately I have been doing this particular run at least three times per week and thus I have been privy to the inside of our surgery amid this corona crisis.

We all have to keep extreme distance, with mostly only one person inside while the rest queue up outside with a reasonable distance between us. Easy in warm weather but when it is howling gales ( at least that what it felt like today ) with an icy windchill, you know that waiting outside is far from nice. Added to that the fact that we have to walk a bit from the parking lot, and it is understandable that the odd running nose might translate into a sniffle.

Thankfully we all wear full battle gear and thus noses are covered. Red nose nicely hidden and dare I say it, the odd runny nose kept a secret. One doesn't even want to attempt to clear one's throat or even attempt to blow one's nose. Instantly people are aghast and fall back, not without sending a few daggers along. Gosh, I might do the same.

God forbid a sneeze is in the offing. What to do, where to turn and where to hide? What we used to take for granted now makes us ultra paranoid and ultra mean. Whereas before we would have offered a kind bless you along with a tissue, we now turn a cold shoulder and shelter our faces. Not every cough, sneeze or sniffle is a sign of corona infection.

A mandate to wear those N-95 masks could be in place soon and that might be a saving grace. The experts tell us that these masks have a 95%  reduction of catching the virus as opposed to 10-20% for our ordinary face masks. In fact, these masks have been hiding their might of prevention in plain sight and we have not cottoned on to it. Imagine if we all wore these masks when out and about, we could stop 95% of the virus getting through....isn't that what our vaccines are doing?

Come on governments, issue these masks for everyone so that we can get this pandemic under control until we are all vaccinated.

Biggi