Editing 1612: Colds

{{comic
| number    = 1612
| date      = December 4, 2015
| title     = Colds
| image     = colds.png
| titletext = The contagious period ends right around when you start to sound sick over the phone, which is probably evidence of cold viruses evolving to spread optimally in the workplace.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|First draft please improve if you can.}}
When you get a {{w|Common cold|cold}} you often start out by having a sore throat and you feel heavy in you entire body and become tired. You feel really bad, although you may not turn in sick. But your voice still sounds OK and people will only notice if you tell them, and even then they may not realize how bad it is. 

But then after the throat turns better, you often begin to cough and this makes you hoarse. You may also need to blow your nose a lot more than in the beginning (not mentioned here though). All of this makes it clear to people around you that you are sick. But actually you are already feeling much better than the first few days of your cold. 

But it is now when you sound hoarse that people gives you the {{w|sympathy}} you really needed when you were feeling awful the first couple of days. And to [[Randall]] this is the worst about colds, that you first get the sympathy when you no longer really need it. (Other people might think the sore throat and the runny nose hoarseness is even worse than not getting sympathy...)

The graph shows the above mentioned facts as two curves, one that indicates how bad you have it, really bad on day 2, but much better already on day 3 of your cold. And the other curve how bad you sound due to the hoarseness and the coughing. And this curve first peaks around day 4-6 where you no longer need the sympathy you get from it.

The symptoms of the two periods are listed below the curves indicating which periods you are affected by them. 

In the title text Randall muses about the fact that you first stop being contagious around the time when you begin to sound hoarse. This is the time when people ask you to stay at home in bed when you call in to the office, because you sound so hoarse. And also the time, when people will stay clear of you if you do come in. But then it is too late, since you have probably already infected them by then. Randall thus suggests that this is evidence that the cold virus has evolved to spread optimally in a work place. Since the cold virus is much older than offices this is unlikely. But it will always spread better in places where many people are close together (and since we are more inside in the winter, this is the main reason why it spreads more during cold periods.) However, viruses do evolve very quickly so it may not be unlikely that some of them has already adapted to our present way of living.

==Transcript==
:[A graph is shown with two curves. The Y-axis indicated how you feel, with three levels indicated with small ticks on the inside of the axis. These are labeled to the left of the Y–axis. The X-axis gives the time. The unit is given (days written in gray text) to the left and then the number of days are noted below the axis for each of the eight ticks on the inside of the axis). Both curves begin at the lowest level just off the Y-axis. One curve, indicating how bad you feel, rises rapidly, reaching it's maximum in less than two days only to fall off almost as rapidly, ending up on an even lower level than it began with before day 5. The other curve, indicating how bad you sound, start out by staying constantly low, first rising on day 3, when the first curve are drooping down. They cross between day 3 and 4, and first then does the second curve rise, reaching its max around day 5, not as high a maximum  as the first curve, but it stays up longer, falling only moderately off even after day 8, where it reaches the middle level on the Y-axis. Above the two curves are two line intervals that indicated when you need sympathy and when you get it. This text is written on the broken line. All this is in gray text. Below the X-axis are the symptoms listed for the different time period. These are written in white inside gray rectangles. The rectangles are a different length depending on how many days they last. And they are in two layers.]

:[Y-axis:]
:The worst
:Bad
:Fine

:[The X-axis, with the unit written in gray just below ''Fine'' from the Y-axis:]
:<font color="gray">Days:</font> 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

:[Labels for curves:]
:How bad you feel
:How bad you sound

:[Gray text on the two gray lines above:]
:<font color="gray">Need sympathy 
:Get sympathy</font> 

:[Text in white on gray below, first the three to the left (one above two below), then the two to the right one above the other:]
:Skin crawling
:Sore throat
:Aching
:Cough
:Hoarseness

:[Caption below the frame:]
:The worst part about colds

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]