“Clearing your throat in public was once a minor annoyance to the people around you. These days, it could prompt a Covid panic,” writes Anita Singh in Tuesday’s (9/7) Daily Telegraph (U.K.). “The result is the disappearance of the throat-clearing cough from public spaces, according to Radio 3’s Petroc Trelawny, who said the effect on The Proms [classical concerts] had been entirely positive…. ‘Most of us seldom need to indulge in a gentle bout of rasping … Now, you cough in public at your own risk. Even before you realize what you’ve done, anxious sideways looks will have been exchanged, the seeds of doubt sown…. Eighteen months of living with Covid seems to have stopped us coughing unnecessarily.’ … In previous Proms seasons, Trelawny said, the Royal Albert Hall could feel like a sanatorium as ‘the brief pause between movements of a symphony or concerto would be the cue for a rally of controlled expectoration, one person’s bark firing off a cacophony of coughing.’ … Research published by the British Medical Journal last year into the new social rules of the pandemic found that ‘coughing and sneezing are now being experienced as significant, dramatic, anxiety-provoking events.’ ”
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