Where did this germ come from?

[capri0mni]

I have no idea where I caught this thing from... I'm functionally housebound, and the only person I come in contact with regularly is my aide.

She was down with a cold over a week ago (maybe two weeks), and I didn't catch any of her symptoms then, and my symptoms (Started with a sudden sore throat Friday morning, and runny nose, both of which quickly diminished, but were followed fever and headache soon after) are different from hers, anyway...

I did get a new delivery by UPS earlier in the week, which had been sitting in my room for a few days. And the package finally opened the Thursday night before bed...

I'm wondering if I could have caught something from an overworked warehouse employee who sneezed their germs all over the contents as they taped up the box... Although the box was not airtight, the packaging inside the box was.

Is't possible?

(I seem to have shed my "Ugh!" icon... If I had the energy, I'd make a new one. But my head feels like it's stuffed with shredded, soggy cardboard.)

Comments

[capri0mni]

Now, granted -- the outer cardboard box was not tightly sealed, and was sitting right by the door where I wheeled past it a few dozen times before it was brought into my room and opened.

It wasn't until the inner plastic packaging was opened that I showed symptoms, about 9 hours later. ...And I would have thought that that packaging would have all happened on an automated assembly line, by machines, these days...

But the timing is sure right on for it. Maybe the quality control person sneezed.

(If so, that makes the lack of paid sick leave for "non-skilled" workers, which is the norm in the U.S., thanks to the demise of the unions, downright criminal. Thank fate and my genes that I don't have a compromised immune system).

[siliconshaman]

Could be anyone in the factory, coughs and sneeze spread diseases, you know. Usually the boxes aren't sealed until pretty nearly the last minute. Could even be someone at the factory where they make the packaging.

It's stuff like this that gives epidemiologists nightmares. You have any idea how hard to would be to trace that back? Or how easy it would be for one sick worker in a factory in China to spread the next Plague around the world?

[capri0mni]

*cough*

*sniffle*

...I'm getting an inkling...

And now, I'm off to the kitchen to warm up some O.J., honey, and ginger...

[butterflydreaming]

Nine hours sounded too short for symptoms of a cold to me. Looking it up, yes, it should be more like 1-3 days from time of exposure.

[capri0mni]

*nod*

Yeah. That's why I'm thinking "Flu," too.

I dud get my flu vaccine back in November, which, while it hasn't been stopping the virus entirely, does lessen its severity.

So I'm keeping track of its progress, and am cautiously optimistic that this won't be one of the worse-case scenarios.