How close do you have to be to someone to catch something off them?

3.6 metres in general, but in a smaller room it is often more like 2.77.

Reply 2

If they touch you, you've got the lurgies.

Reply 3

Oh

I wish you hadn't explained more fully what you meant by 'something'...
I was formulating crude but witty remarks about STI's, goshdarn it!

Reply 4

Glutamic Acid

If they touch you, you've got the lurgies.

Lurgies? What the hell are lurgies?

It was coodies when I was at school...

...'Eurgh! Jimmy's got coodies!'

*All run away*

*Jimmy sits down and bawls*

*'Coodies' get banned by boring, sadistic primary school teachers, along with 'dizzy dinosaurs' and 'power rangers'*

Reply 5

dh00001

16

its specific to the illness. some require direct contact or exchange of fluids, some can supposedly be carried miles. :dontknow:

Reply 6

Lady Venom

14

Did you not see BBC breakfast this morning - they were talking about how far a sneeze carries germs. And yup, it's a long way. Do what the Japanese do - if you are ill cover you mouth/nose with a mask and do the same if you are worried about catching something.

Reply 7

Celifein

7

Thud

In h&r because seems most appropriate.

By "something" in the title I mean like a cold, or the flu etc. How far is metres/centimetres is a safe distance, how much does this distance change depending on room size, air circulation etc roughly?

But most important is the plain question of rough distance, the other more specific things are just extras. Thanks. :smile:

Assuming you're worried about catching the 'flu from all the snotty folk at your school/uni/whatever, I'd recommend keeping a normal distance away and washing your hands before you eat (apparently we often catch things by touching something a sick person touched, then touching our food, then eating it). You could also try giving filthy looks to people who cough without covering their mouths, but that rarely works.

Reply 8

Meep!

Lurgies? What the hell are lurgies?

It was coodies when I was at school...

...'Eurgh! Jimmy's got coodies!'

*All run away*

*Jimmy sits down and bawls*

*'Coodies' get banned by boring, sadistic primary school teachers, along with 'dizzy dinosaurs' and 'power rangers'*

I thought cooties were an American thing. Maybe you say cooties because the Yanks pronounce their 't's closer to 'd's. Anyway, whilst lurgies are just a funny term for a made-up disease, a cootie is an actual bug.

Reply 9

Cowards

8

Glutamic Acid

a cootie is an actual bug.

No they aren't.

Reply 10

Glutamic Acid

I thought cooties were an American thing. Maybe you say cooties because the Yanks pronounce their 't's closer to 'd's. Anyway, whilst lurgies are just a funny term for a made-up disease, a cootie is an actual bug.

wikipedia

Cooties
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One supposedly catches cooties through any form of bodily contact, close proximity, contact with an "infected" person's possessions, or third-party transmission. In prepubescent children it serves as a device for enforcing gender separation.

Originally, the term implied body lice, but over time this became generalized to any sort of lice, including head lice. The term then evolved into a purely imaginary stand-in for anything that is considered repulsive. In British English the term lurgy may be used in the same context. However, lurgy has a broader definition and the two concepts are not necessarily equivalent.

Which would explain where my primary school game of 'coodies' came from, and unless someone can show me something contradicting this, shows that cooties and lurgy tend to refer to the same thing.

And lice aren't a disease.

Reply 11

mollymustard

14

Yeah, I think its illness specific.

Some kid in Year 7 at my school has Scarlet Fever. We've all been warned to look out for the symptoms! Eeeek! I'm just hoping I havnt been anywhere near them...

Reply 12

Cowards

No they aren't.

Yes, they are. It may several definitions, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Meep!

And lice aren't a disease.

Where did I say they were?

Reply 13

Glutamic Acid

Where did I say they were?

I took your saying that cooties was an actual bug in the context of bug meaning disease, seeing as you had just discounted lurgy as being a disease in saying this:

Anyway, whilst lurgies are just a funny term for a made-up disease, a cootie is an actual bug.

In reference to this, see my quote from wikipedia:

Originally, the term implied body lice, but over time this became generalized to any sort of lice, including head lice. The term then evolved into a purely imaginary stand-in for anything that is considered repulsive. In British English the term lurgy may be used in the same context. However, lurgy has a broader definition and the two concepts are not necessarily equivalent.

I know wikipedia can't always be trusted, but here it appears to say that lurgy has a similar meaning to cooties in reference to lice. Therefore not just made up.

Reply 14