Interested attention on sneezes confused for pandemic uneasiness?

[brokensneeze]

Some things I read on the forum today reminded me of something that happened sometime last year, and I'm wondering if anyone else experienced something similar.

I was on a nature walk, during the time that many people in my area were still wearing masks outdoors just to be sure, and came off a side trail onto a wider road. Just then, a woman walked by on the road and sneezed, and I looked quickly at her. She looked back with a sort of "I'm sorry" expression--I suspect that because she wasn't wearing a mask at the time, she thought that she had grossed me out by sneezing.

I imagine many people who noticed sneeze fetishists looking at them in the past year and a half have assumed something like that, although probably in no case was this fact actually acknowledged by the people involved. In some sense it has become "normal" to pay attention to sneezes, which kind of made it "good" to be a fetishist, but on the other hand it potentially has caused unnecessary shame and worry among sneezers who thought they had disgusted/offended people. That in turn possibly made even subtle attention from the fetishists more likely to be noticed, too, which is also not such a great thing for either side.

Edited October 18, 2021 by brokensneeze