With the coronavirus pandemic, the authorities insist on teaching us the correct way to sneeze: in the flexure of the elbow. And it doesn’t hurt to follow their advice, because sneezing is a dangerous weapon of mass destruction; Think of the more than 30 million people who died from the ill-fated 1918 flu.
The air expelled in a sneeze leaves the nose at a speed of 65 km / h , which is equivalent to a wind force of 8 on the Beaufort scale: according to the navigation books, it is equivalent to ‘temporary’ and is capable of break the treetops. Just for comparison, when we breathe we exhale the air at a modest 8 km / h.
And the sneeze arrives. If we are not fast enough, we will use the hand instead of a handkerchief. Something that, by the way, is of little use. With the change from the cloth handkerchief to the paper handkerchief we have gained comfort but little else. Tissues actually have more holes than paper because this is how manufacturers get that soft and pleasant touch. If the wood pulp fibers were closer together the whole would be more hygienic but it would not be a commercially attractive product: nobody likes to blow their nose with a sheet of paper …
But of course, tissues are designed to blow your nose, not to stop wet, hurricane-force winds. This means that the small droplets of nasal fluid that we expel when we sneeze, where the viruses that cause the infection are comfortably installed, pass through the tissue with relative ease . Once the droplets of our sneeze begin to move in the open air, they undergo a curious mutation. The friction with the air at 65 km / h dries them up and the only thing that remains about 40 cm from the mouth from which they have emerged is an amalgam of mucous residues in the shape of a dart that carries the fearsome infectious load.
We do not believe that to avoid contagion it is enough to move away from the line of fire. The action of placing a handkerchief in front of the mouth and nose also causes some of these droplets to shoot out the sides , so that the room will be flooded with those small germ-carrying bullets that will move slowly around the room. The only way to avoid contagion is to rush out and wait two hours before going back inside. Only then can we be sure that the evil darts have stopped floating around and have fallen to the ground.
Now, not everything is going to be bad. One advantage of living in places like cities is that we are continually exposed to the attack of viruses and other microbes coming from the throats and noses of our neighbors. This continuous exposure allows us to live comfortably without being bedridden day in and day out, because we have developed the necessary defenses to prevent its advance beyond our mucous membranes. Only when we are faced with new infections, such as the new coronavirus, our defense parapet, which is the immune system, is of little use.
