Typhoid Mary

[kailara]

Last night's episode of Mythbusters dealt with myths related to sneezing and spread of the common cold. One of their tests involved rigging Adam up with a "mechanical cold" - a drip rig along his nose that leaked a clear liquid that is fluorescent under black light at the same rate as the human nose produces mucus when sick. They then had a "dinner

Comments

[chelleann77]

This is exactly why I believe that people who have colds should stay home and miss all the fun. Because if you love your friends, you don't try to infect them.

[kailara]

Not disagreeing - but I did find it interesting how effective Adam was at NOT "infecting" anyone at the table when he was being careful about it. When he didn't shake hands, asked others to pass things around, warned them that he was "sick" and generally tried to avoid spreading anything there was almost no transfer.

I'd also be curious to see how much difference it would make if the sick person uses hand sanitizer - especially in a test where the precautionary level was in between the two.

Agreed though - the best way to not share your cold is to not be around people when you're sick.

[trundle]

But none of those measures matter all that much if the pathogen is airborne, right? Regardless of how careful you are with your hands/fluids, if you've got the flu and you're breathing around other people, you're risking spreading it to them.

[kailara]

Quite true. Best choice is always to just stay away from people until you're sure you're not contagious -- but knowing that the transmission factors can be reduced is good when you're in a social circle that hasn't really flinched from the practice of willingly putting themselves into the path of the sick members of the group. (For example, I've never seen one of our GMs decide to call off game just because the person hosting is sick and everyone will be walking into a plague house - nor have the players opted to not show up.)

[stride]

I think that, as much as I missed seeing people on Friday nights this past year, it was a blessing in disguise since I did not get sick.