'OMG, do you have Covid?': How the pandemic has made common cold the least likely possibility

My sense vis-à-vis my sensibilities has been heightened. For instance, whenever I am in a public area, like, say, the metro station or my building lobby, and I need to sneeze, or cough, I feel guilty… very guilty. And ashamed. I begin to believe everyone is judging me through Covid-induced suspicion.

Then, there was that time when I held in a sneeze — or was it a cough? — while I was in a taxi lest the cabbie judged me. It was a huge effort trying to suppress it for a good 15 minutes, and when I finally got out of the cab, I looked around furtively to see if anyone was within earshot and then sneezed/coughed out loud.

A couple of weeks ago, I felt a bad cold descend on me. I could actually feel it take shape in my throat. The air-conditioning at work was at an uber level, and I had just come in from a spate of time under the blazing sun. All the formulas were in the place and I knew it was a matter of time when the ‘equal to’ part of the equation would kick in. And it did. By afternoon, I was sneezing and coughing and popping in paracetamols. A friend called right then and wanted to know if I’d like to meet. “I have a bad cold,” I started, “but, yes, I guess we can after work.”

“Absolutely not,” she exclaimed. “I’m travelling next week, and I don’t want to contract Covid from you… we’ll meet after I’m back.”

“Who said I have Covid?”

“Well, these days, you can’t be sure, can you?” she whispered as she hung up.

There’s a colleague at work who wears double protection: two masks, front on back. When I mentioned I may have contracted a cold, he pulled both masks tighter around his face and hissed: “Go home, right now.”

Earlier if you displayed signs of a Panadol-popping moment, people around would say stuff like “Have Vitamin C”, or “Have grated ginger with honey, it really works”. Now they ask, “OMG, do you have Covid?”

sushmita@khaleejtimes.com