Avoiding illness cycling in the winter

[simonineaston]

I dont know how fast germs travel but I'm going to stick my neck out here and guess that even the slowest of cyclists (I have on mind, myself...) can out pace your typical germ! OK I have read that a germ can whizz along pretty smartish carried by the fantastic speedy Gonzales that is The Sneeze, but that's kind of the Usain Bolt of germs, really. Very impressive but they cant keep it for long. Another thing is, alot of the germs will get in to the car with their host, thus leaving the streets mostly free of germs for us cyclists to enjoy.
I have more sympathy however for the notion of "catching a chill" much relied on by my mother, to put fear into us children, such that we would don the vest.

[Nearholmer]

The best, possibly only, way to avoid catching colds, flu etc is to become a complete hermit, the “shielding” thing that vulnerable people had to resort to during the height of Covid. As soon as you interact with other people, especially indoors at close range, and lots of ‘em, you’ve lost the game. The OP is a school teacher, so cashed-in his or her chips a long time ago!

On which point, I still can’t really work out how I caught Covid when I did, because at the time I was living a pretty hermetic existence, not deliberately so, but simply was, and in the week before I came down with it I’d only been out twice, both for fairly long rural bike rides, in one case eating at a cafe, but a very, very large and empty one, sitting next to an open window, and in the second case eating outdoors, on a bench next to a canal. I did have a few conversations with people, outdoors in the breeze, and presumably Covid is so catchable that I copped it from one of the people I chatted to.

[mig]

The best, possibly only, way to avoid catching colds, flu etc is to become a complete hermit, the “shielding” thing that vulnerable people had to resort to during the height of Covid. As soon as you interact with other people, especially indoors at close range, and lots of ‘em, you’ve lost the game. The OP is a school teacher, so cashed-in his or her chips a long time ago!

On which point, I still can’t really work out how I caught Covid when I did, because at the time I was living a pretty hermetic existence, not deliberately so, but simply was, and in the week before I came down with it I’d only been out twice, both for fairly long rural bike rides, in one case eating at a cafe, but a very, very large and empty one, sitting next to an open window, and in the second case eating outdoors, on a bench next to a canal. I did have a few conversations with people, outdoors in the breeze, and presumably Covid is so catchable that I copped it from one of the people I chatted to.

covid does have a fairly long active existence on surfaces so your cafe table, the door handle, the bench could be the culprits!

[Biospace]

covid does have a fairly long active existence on surfaces so your cafe table, the door handle, the bench could be the culprits!

This was a common theme early in the spread of Covid, reported to be an assumption on the basis of studies that have little resemblance to real-life scenarios. As time progressed, it was made clear it wasn't a significant pathway for transmission, although of course not impossible.

The best, possibly only, way to avoid catching colds, flu etc is to become a complete hermit, the “shielding” thing that vulnerable people had to resort to during the height of Covid. As soon as you interact with other people, especially indoors at close range, and lots of ‘em, you’ve lost the game. The OP is a school teacher, so cashed-in his or her chips a long time ago!

On which point, I still can’t really work out how I caught Covid when I did, because at the time I was living a pretty hermetic existence, not deliberately so, but simply was, and in the week before I came down with it I’d only been out twice, both for fairly long rural bike rides, in one case eating at a cafe, but a very, very large and empty one, sitting next to an open window, and in the second case eating outdoors, on a bench next to a canal. I did have a few conversations with people, outdoors in the breeze, and presumably Covid is so catchable that I copped it from one of the people I chatted to.

How we "catch" disease is a very interesting subject indeed. There is likely more that we don't understand and know about immunology than we do, the development in thinking surrounding the microbiome in recent years has been very interesting.

I would expect to be more likely to catch something if living a "pretty hermetic existence" rather than a more normal one where you're in close-ish contact with many people on a regular basis, since a healthy immune system grows more robust the more it is challenged. If someone shuts themselves off from all other human contact, they may escape flu-like diseases, but they'll likely be less healthy in the round.

<conspiracy theory removed by moderator>