Spreading germs

I am in bed with a cold. Nothing more than a cold, but a miserable cold: sore throat, coughing, sneezing, headache, aching joints, lethargy, dyspraxia, poor concentration and a profound loss of charitable sentiment. It is not 'flu, and I have not been in bed all day. I have, however, felt lousy all day, and for the past few days. I have been unproductive in terms of my paid work, and have done none of the household jobs I had lined up for the Christmas / New Year break. Plans to take my family out on a trip have had to be cancelled. This cold has been 'expensive'.

I was 'given' the cold. It was passed on to me by someone who had been suffering a heavy cold. They knew they were infectious, and they did little to avoid infecting me.

On the streets of Tokyo, we saw people wearing cotton face masks. From a UK perspective one could easily assume that these people were fearful about catching an infection. However, these were people with respiratory infections who wished to avoid spreading their germs. I find their considerate behaviour easy to respect. In Britain it is not acceptable to wear a cotton face mask except in hospital. If I were to wear one to the supermarket tomorrow, I would be stared at, and it would be assumed that I was unhappy about the hygiene of the shop, its staff or its customers. At work, several weeks ago, I asked whether I might discourage counselling clients who were suffering from a heavy cold or seasonal 'flu from attending counselling, risking the counsellor being off work sick for a few days and thereby denying counselling to other clients. I was informed that it was not policy to discourage clients, infectious or otherwise, from attending counselling. I have never contracted mumps. Being the age I am, the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccination was way after my time. I am, therefore, at risk of being infected with mumps by anyone who, wittingly or otherwise, exposes me to the disease. I do not understand why it is permissible for my health to be put at risk by people who are unwilling to take responsibility for not spreading infection. (In the spring of 2007, students at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, irresponsibly spread mumps across the breadth of Canada because they knowingly ignored quarantine restrictions.) For some reason, spreading germs in the UK is not something about which one takes personal responsibility. As my counselling supervisor recently said about contracting diseases carried by clients: "It's just one of those things." I am permitted to spread almost any germs, including STDs, I wish with impunity. Although there may be some exceptions, such as typhoid and its celebrated carrier, Mary Mallon, according to a Wikipedia article on quarantine: "The last federal order of involuntary quarantine, prior to the 2007 tuberculosis scare, was issued in 1963." Of course, the one virus of which so many people in Britain are fearful to the point of discriminatory prejudice is HIV, transmission of which is largely limited to sexual contact, blood transfusions and needle-stick injuries. In contrast, earlier in the year I read the statistics about food poisoning from ready-prepared food, such as in cafes, restaurants and the chiller cabinets of shops and supermarkets: they are horrific. Many of these infections are personal hygiene related, are easily preventable, and can be fatal. The term 'caveat emptor' (let the buyer beware: the buyer takes all the risks) appears to be applied in Britain a good deal more widely than simply buying things.

Although the threat of an H5N1-based 'flu pandemic seems to have passed, at least for the time being, the level of personal danger posed by the virus would have driven many people in Britain to the extremity of wearing cotton face masks. It goes without saying that it would be the healthy who would be wearing them.

Were the situation to be different, I should prefer the social ethic to be that anyone who was infectious did, as a matter of course, whatever was necessary to prevent the spread of their infection, isolating themselves if necessary. This would inevitably involve hand-washing, and the widespread use of disinfectant hand gels. It may involve the public use of cotton face masks, like in Japan.