Tuesday, January 3, 2023

The spread of library diseases








The probabilities suggest that I caught my Covid at the library. Which would make it the 837th thing I caught while working at the library over these many decades. This one may not be the worst of all those diseases, but it is up there- weeks later and I am still prone to coughing, and I don't feel entirely well yet.

But here I am, at the library. I don't test positive for Covid anymore. And I don't believe I am contagious in any way. But I have burnt through a lot of sick time. So I am at work. Nevertheless, if I heard my cough, while I was looking for a nice interesting fiction book to take home, I would exercise some caution in plunging down the aisle where I'm shelving, and I certainly can't imagine standing near me while I'm hacking away.

But I guess I'm weird like that. Because even though I was painfully self conscious when I coughed while shelving, there were loads of people who were perfectly happy to crowd in around me in order to get a book, or even to just look for a book, or perhaps they were there to smell the menthol in my cough drop. In short, they were not shy of my disease at all!

And yet I can't help but notice, they were well and I was sick.

Perhaps I know less about germ theory than I thought.






1 comment:

  1. Are you masking? How about patrons? Here, masks seem to be making a bit of a comeback. I try to remember a mask when I go to a store, but if I forget it in the glove box I'm unlikely to go back to the car.

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