The given phenomenon is based on the personal observation of people’s attitudes towards sneezing and COVID-19. It became highly common for people to be wary and judgmental in regards to people who sneeze in public. The majority of the population directly assumes that the specified action is linked to coronavirus, where, in fact, sneezing can be the result of a wide range of causes. It can be caused by allergies, other infections, or mere stimulation of the inner nose. However, it is important to note that such an approach is justified because sneezing allows COVID-19 to spread more effectively and persistently, which is why people should be concerned about a person sneezing in public places.
It is evident that the coronavirus spreads through air droplets, which contain the virus particles, and they are released from the respiratory system of an infected individual. Research suggests that a mere act of breathing does not transfer the virus for more than one meter, but sneezing and coughing can disperse the agent for up to seven meters, and it also makes the droplets more persistent in their duration within the air (Shafaghi et al., 2020).
In other words, if a person has coronavirus and sneezes in public, his or her droplets will travel further and live longer than regular breathing, which makes the spreading process more effective. Another research conducted exclusively on sneezing states: “The analysis showed how sneezing is by far the most violent spasmodic expiration of a mixture of moist air and saliva. The region of influence of the sneeze cloud is 2–4 times larger, in the case of zero-wind conditions” (Busco et al., 2020, p. 18). It means that sneezing is the most dangerous spreader of the virus, which is even superior to coughing.
References
Busco, G., Yang, S. R., Seo, J., & Hassan, Y. A. (2020). Sneezing and asymptomatic virus transmission. Physics of Fluids, 32(7), 1-19. Web.
Shafaghi, A. H., Rokhsar Talabazar, F., Koşar, A., & Ghorbani, M. (2020). On the effect of the respiratory droplet generation condition on COVID-19 transmission. Fluids, 5(3), 1-13. Web.