Why should we pay without sneezing?

Why is it important to pay without sneezing?

The average sneeze travels at the rate of 100-200 miles per hour. Forty thousand droplets of fluid contain about 100,000 germs. Most of the droplets are smaller than the width of a human hair. Germs can travel over 25 feet. Viruses are smaller and, therefore, travel farther.

There are at least seven different types of coronaviruses that can infect humans. The first was discovered in the 1960s. Worldwide, 858 confirmed people have died from the MERS-CoV. Worldwide, 774 confirmed people have died from SARS. The death rate for Covid-19 continues to climb daily.

These statistics flutter about my brain as I get into my car in the morning. Wishing to support the local private businesses, I decide to get a coffee on my way to work. As I walk into my local coffee shop, mask in place, an employee holds the door for me. I stand in line, six feet from the nearest customer. When it is my turn, I stand back from the counter and give my order. The masked and gloved baristas make my drink and give me my total.

So far, I have avoided touching anything but the floor. But now, the little portable credit card pad looms large in my field of vision. I withdraw my card from my wallet and carefully slid it into the slot without touching the counter. The machine takes a moment to confer with its masters in the ether, determining sales tax and total amount due, and then the lights spell out the phrase that will doom us all:

Is this amount correct?

I look around me. Most of the customers are wearing masks, but not all. Who else has come without a mask? Did they cough? Did they sneeze? Did they spray the counter and keypad with microscopic messengers of doom and death?

There's no way around it. I've forgotten my gloves. There's nothing else I can do. I stretch out a single sacrificial finger and push the button:

OK

Who knows what terrors the keypad has seen? Who can tell what evil has been transferred from the single springed button to the swirls and grooves of my poor fingertip? It could be the end of us all!

Dazed, I try to remember what to do next. One the other end of the counter, my drink is waiting. I withdraw my card and put it back in my wallet, careful to only touch the end that wasn't in the machine. But too late! My contaminated finger has touched the plastic!

Belatedly, I wipe the finger on my jeans, ignoring the fact that sometime within the next three days, I will likely touch the soft denim again. I take my drink—too distraught to remember to ask for two packets of Stevia—and retrace my steps, past the employee who cheerfully thanks me. I reach into my pocket and extract my keys, unlock the car and climb in, trying desperately to ignore the gazillions of viruses and germs that are now transferred to my inner sanctum.

And I drive to the office, praying without ceasing that I have not just precipitated the downfall of Western civilization.

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