If you're still covering a sneeze with your hand, congratulations - you're old. If you cover with a handkerchief, congratulations - you're even older. (If you have a tissue tucked in your shirt sleeve or cleavage, you're my grandmother, rest her soul.)
These days, the kids sneeze and cough into the crook of their elbow.
Look at any toddler worth their manners rhyme and you'll see them close
their eyes, open their mouth and…ah-choo: elbow city. Technically it's
called the sleeve sneeze.
Why the change from the old-school hand cover? Let's workshop this. You
sneeze and as a non-revolting person shield it with the palm side of
your hand. Then, say, you buy something and pay with that hand. Or you
open a door, or use a mouse, or meet some nice unsuspecting person and
shake hands. Basically, your polite palm becomes a delivery method for
your sneeze juice. Thanks, vector.
The sleeve sneeze is endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has a Cover Your Cough campaign and reinforced by the eminent health expert Elmo in a 20TK PSA. And while its provenance is murky, the Chicago Tribune traced the method's earliest journalistic citation to a pediatrician quoted in a 1994 Denver Post article.
Veteran preschool teacher Rachel Valentine Martinez said she thinks
inner-elbow sneeze etiquette spread, well, virally because it "just
feels intuitive for kids." Who don't, like my grandma, have tissues in
their sleeves.
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