Reply To: Are you allowed to give Tzeddakah/charity to Non-Jews

On sneezing in general:
many people would not normally go sneezing around to shul or office before COVID. Not just moris ayn, just kavod habriyut. Cultures might differ.
publicly quoted experts say that it is generally not possible to differentiate between COVID and less harmful viruses based on external symptoms, so your friends did the right thing to go test. I am thinking it is true only one way: if you have a cold, you don’t know what it is. But I heard some COVID cough that does not sound like anything I ever heard, and especially from that particular person.