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Comment by whoru007 | Hacker News Reader

> Cover your sneeze. Cover your cough. Stay home when sick. These are kindergarten-level cultural learnings.

A friend/colleague of mine is suffering from Chronic sinusitis and she usually sneezes every morning for around 20-30 times (random number, I know!) over period of few hours. The 'sneezing fit' is 100% of the time non-contagious yet loud and 'full with watery substance', She covers her sneezing most of the time however it is not always possible to react in time.

Also, she's a single working mother raising two well mannered and cute children. Would you expect her to always stay home when she's always 'sick'?

These kindergarten-level cultural learnings you are talking about are societal pressure, we inhale pollutants, pollens and smoke from cigarettes all the time!

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Be realistic. We're talking about the 99.9% of other people who don't have that condition.

The point is not all sneezes are due to colds. There are other causes that account for much more than .1%. Don't reinfoce societal pressure with biased probability analysis.

>Don't reinfoce societal pressure with biased probability analysis.

They aren't saying don't sneeze, they're saying cover your sneeze. It doesn't matter why you are sneezing, covering it is the standard.

Agreed, but I think what is ridiculous is training your lungs to minimize the effectiveness of your sneeze. That is absolutely ridiculous: your body is sneezing for a reason, let it do its thing (and cover it).

I think his tips were meant as an option. To be quite honest I'll be trying some of these, because it's not a huge amount of effort at all.

Where do you get your numbers from? Allergies are a pretty common thing. And the symptoms mimic a cold. Numbers seem to differ, but I'm getting anything from 10% to 30% of adults. [1] I'm pretty sure that makes your numbers bad.

And want folks to stay home? How the heck are they supposed to afford it when they can be contagious for 2 weeks? Heck, folks are contagious before their symptoms even start. How can one allow for that? [2] Most jobs aren't going to allow for that sort of time off, nor are schools. Most that do will require a doctor's note - and it hardly seems reasonable to go to a doctor for a simple cold virus.

[1] http://www.aaaai.org/about-aaaai/newsroom/allergy-statistics [2] https://www.healthline.com/health/cold-flu/contagious#overvi...

way more people that that have allergies

The CDC says 12.1% of the adult US population has sinusitis[1].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/sinuses.htm

So what? Transpeople are rather low as a percentage of the population, yet we extend or argue to extend massive courtesies to them. If you are going to make a policy, expect to include a small population.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/health/transgender-popula...

There are a lot of definitions of "trans" going about these days. Just search on Youtube of Reddit. Many of them are in my opinion attention seekers (not saying that genuine transgenderism doesn't exist, but a lot of people are making some very silly sounding claims lacking any scientific backing).

I agree. There is also anecdotal evidence that within the trans community (MtF) that take hormones, the commuity is split into people wanting to trans-ition and to as a third way that spans the genders. My point in the original post is that we have policies for such a small group of people, that the OP should look into sneezing policies to take into account small groups.

Here's a policy: Regardless of what's in your underpants -- don't sneeze in the air, don't cough on people and keep thy cooties to thyself. Pretty simple really.

Not everything is about sexual identity. This SJW nonsense has gone over the top. Please don't try to convince me we need a non-binary-trans-sneeze policy because of white cis privilege because you'd be wasting your time. If so, we have reached cultural peak absurdity.

Nope, not convincing you that you need a non-binary sneeze policy. I'm using that as an example of having policies that make sense when dealing with a minor population. The original example was people with sinititius and being able to comply with the policy. Also, another goal was to make people think do we even need such a draconian sneeze policy to begin with? What about the science that says that the more things you are exposed to the more resilient your system?

That's unfortunate. I used to suffer from occasional random sneezing until I got far enough down the list of suggested hayfever treatments to find one that worked (avamys). There are a lot of different causes of this kind of thing and some are very easily treated and some aren't.

this used to be me. constantly sick with sinus infection (like out of action for ~10 days every 2 months). I started dating someone who ate a vegan diet, and after adopting that diet I've been sick twice in 4 years and both times were very light and ran for only 2-3 days.

I have no idea why it had that effect for me, and everyone is different, but if she's suffering enough that she's at the point where she'll try anything you might pass along my anecdote. I wish I had chanced into it earlier.

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