Just got shouted at in a coffee shop for coughing in public 🥴

[wildgreyocean]

I know I’m not being unreasonable here but I just need some reassurance! I was in a coffee shop after popping to the shops and got a tickle in my throat. I’ve had a cold all week but nothing too severe. I coughed and next thing I know an old man is shouting at me that I’m being selfish and should be self isolating at home, and “don’t I know the NHS is on its knees?!”

AIBU to think this is a total overreaction to a cough?!

Well said

But the original poster stated it as fact!

It’s not.

Blame the ones demanding evidence and sources of the most basic facts known about infection control. The OP does work in the NHS, and said she’s been going to work sick. I do wonder if she is patient facing and and hope to god she isn’t in neonatal or paediatrics.

I could not use Reddit, Tik Tok, Instagram etc as a resource to make a claim, so why should you?
Anyone can make up any old shite on them.

Not really. Op is posting saying the vulnerable (which covers old people and babies broadly, as well as a raft of others) should just stay home all the time - meanwhile she would go insane if she couldn't do as she pleased.

They’ve latched onto the fact that I work in the NHS. Forgetting there are a million and one non clinical roles in the NHS.

It is fact. It has happened in the past.

I didn’t use them so therefore, I did not use SM as references despite your allegation.

Yes, you could be working on payroll... but you would still be told you are putting babies at risk.

Exactly, no one has said she’s a baby killer.
Just OP saying it’s no big deal to spread colds or flus or even Covid.

Or bullshit, as you seem to think is apt.

She put anyone vulnerable that she shared space with while sitting in a cafe drinking at unnecessary risk whether the very young, the elderly or the immunocompromised. All she had to do was get a take away.

It’s also not just what she did, but her defensive attitude and saying she would have done nothing different even if she were coughing Covid all over the cafe.

Source….?

I've had Long Covid since 2020. I cough most days, including when I'm out in coffee shops. The cough really doesn't mean that I'm contagious, though I am embarrassed when it happens.

Thankfully for me, I've never been shouted at.

Oh dear god, get a grip! If we can’t go out with a nasal drip after a common cold, the world will stop
turning!

Yes I have been vulnerable, before you ask!

That’s not what I said. You’re prone to hyperbole and outright untruths aren’t you?

If she was as contagious as you say, then even popping in for a takeaway would be putting people at risk.

She is defensive because a man approached her, a lone woman, and shouted at her.
I feel like I am going mad here. A man shouting at a woman in any other setting on MN would be have posters calling for him to be hung, drawn and quartered. But this thread... well, she wanted him to die from her post nasal drip... clearly.

This thread is mad and I feel like I am on another planet reading some of the comments here.

You’ve no reason to be embarrassed by coughing, it happens!

Patient or staff facing it’s still an enormous risk. These things get passed on.

It raises an interesting question though, would some posters prefer that any front line NHS workers went off sick every time they had a mild cold/runny nose or slight tickly cough? This would surely put most hospitals out of operation throughout the winter at least. As I understand masks, they are for surgeons to wear to prevent their fluids infecting a patient.

My department would be done within a week. We’ve all been sniffly this week. It’s just a fact of life.

There's also a kind of hypocrisy in calling people selfish for going to cafes or working when they have colds. Presumably the people saying this want the cafes, restaurants, businesses, theatres, etc., to exist and be open on the occasions they want to go to them, but are choosing to ignore that in order for that to be the case, customers and workers have to go out with colds.

It's similar to how during Covid, some people on here were furious with people for going out and at the idea that they themselves might need to go back out to work, but still expected deliveries to their homes.

I view the risk of catching something as a negative of living in a society, but it's outweighed by the positives (and I don't want to be a hermit in the woods) so I take basic precautions as appropriate, rather than this unrealistic idea of expecting people to be able to regularly withdraw from society en masse and yet still have a fully functioning society waiting there for when they want it.

During a common cold, not after.
And I haven’t said can’t go out. I’ve said limit your exposure to others and take measures to reduce risk to others.

You can guarantee some of the posters on here were the ones losing their minds when people popped to the shops for something “nonessential” during Covid, or they dared to see people during lockdown.

Thank you. But according to some PPs on this thread, they get very worried about coughing.