I have a head cold.
It’s not COVID. It’s not the flu. It’s not RSV. It’s not pneumonia. It’s a head cold, the term my family always used for the common cold when I was growing up. I’ve got the runny nose, coughing, aching and tiredness.
The woman I’d eat bees for suspects I caught the cold from the person with the persistent hacking cough who was sitting behind us on a 3 hour and 51 minute flight home last week. We had felt lucky that we were able to switch to that earlier flight because a snowstorm was due back home and we hoped to land before it did. The good news was we got home an hour or so earlier than anticipated. The bad news? A head cold.
WebMD tells me I’m contagious for a day or two before the runny nose and sore throat start and for as long as I feel sick, “usually a week or two.” Since I no longer teach full time, I don’t need to worry about canceling classes or passing the cold on to students if I’m contagious for longer than the online sites tell me I’m likely to be. I have two days of interviews that I agreed to do with fellowship candidates next week, but fortunately, these are all via Zoom, which remains impervious to head cold germs.
But I do have meetings with students and colleagues scheduled for next week. I also have the typical tasks that a normal functioning human being without a head cold has to do that involve coming into contact with people.
My options presumably would be to rest up now and if I’m feeling less awful but still under the weather to engage in these tasks. Or to postpone or find alternatives to avoid the risk of spreading the head cold misery. An added challenge is that it’s hard to know exactly when a head cold is over or when, based on WebMD’s broad ranges, I might no longer be contagious.
Some choices are clear. I know I will not pay my 82-year-old neighbor a visit until I am confident I’m over the cold. Even though he will complain that I don’t visit enough, his health isn’t great and I don’t want to risk it. Anything else I can move to an online meeting, I will. As my wife reminds me, she typically does the grocery shopping anyway. There’s no reason I can’t meet her at the door to carry in the groceries when she gets home.
I know that the responsible and right thing to do is to avoid exposing others to my head cold. That is what I will do. While it might be disappointing to cancel a meeting, the health of those I’d be meeting with is more important.
WebMD tells me that chicken soup is actually good for the common head cold. Fortunately, the woman I’d eat bees for shows no signs of having caught the head cold yet. For that I am grateful, since she makes really good chicken soup.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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