Should Contagious People Go to Crowded Places?
The other day I was walking down the grand Avenues on a very busy weekend morning. There were about a hundred or so shoppers milling around, enjoying their time dining or shopping, sometimes getting in each other’s path or almost bumping into each other, but as far as I could see every one looked happy to be in the Avenues that morning.
Until I saw a child covered from head to toe with chicken pox, the cream thing used to treat it smeared all over his face and arms, walking with his family, closely surrounded by other children and shoppers, heading straight for my direction.
For a moment I panicked, I know chicken pox is contagious and that if you had it once, there is no guarantee you won’t get it again especially if your first time around was a mild one. If you’ve seen a picture of me or seen me in person then perhaps you couldn’t miss the huge carved white circle scar right between my eyebrows that draws everyone’s attention the moment they meet me, that’s the chicken pox doing and there are three more of these scattered around my face, albeit a bit smaller. My episode with the chicken pox at the age of six was a traumatic one and I can still remember the pain and obviously resent the scars.
So why on earth would you bring a child with a contagious disease to a crowded mall where there are children around? And elderly people? And pregnant women -which for some means chicken pox is really not a good reason-? I’ve once heard a woman say, matter of factly, that she was doing people a favour by sending her child sick with chicken pox to school so all the other children will get the disease when they are young and get it over with. I can’t even begin to explain my bewilderment at such reasoning.
I have a friend who never got chicken pox and is scared at the very mention of the word. Yes, sometimes people can totally avoid chicken pox and not get it ever and some can get it more than once. Who are you to say that because your child has the pox then its time for everyone else to get it as well? Was walking down the avenues a public service to all parents waiting for that emending doom to befall their child, like a right of passage for childhood or something?
Isn’t it bad enough that people sick with the flu or stomach bugs never seem to stay at home anymore? They go to work, school, university, mall, and even travel while couching and sneezing and spreading their germs everywhere and you can almost always guarantee that you are going to fall for it next! Whatever happened to bed rest? And keeping people with contagious diseases off crowded places?
What do you think? Would you take a sick child or go out while sick to a crowded place? What would you do if you were in a crowded place and the person next to you looked very sick and quite contagious? Would you flee or be OK with it?
