the.com/coughing
your body's panic button, firing at 50 mph to evict whatever dared trespass
means The act of forcing air out of your lungs in a sudden, noisy burst, usually to clear your throat or airways of irritation, mucus, or something that went down the wrong way.
from From Middle English coughen, an imitative word — meaning it was born from the actual rough hacking sound the throat makes, the way 'buzz' or 'hiss' mimic what they name. It's likely related to Dutch kuchen and German keuchen ('to gasp, pant'), all echoing that same scratchy, throat-clearing noise that humans have presumably been making since they first inhaled smoke from a fire.
- air speed
- cough blasts reach 50 miles per hour
- contagious urge
- hearing others cough triggers your own reflex
- brain controlled
- medulla fires the cough, not your lungs
- droplet range
- can launch particles several feet outward
- chronic threshold
- over eight weeks counts as chronic
whooping cough epidemic — pertussis outbreaks killed thousands in pre-vaccine era, still kills ~160,000 annually worldwide
tb cough — tuberculosis causes chronic coughing, kills ~1.3 million people per year globally
covid cough symptom — dry cough reported by 68% of covid-19 patients during 2020-2021 pandemic