#2535: Common Cold Viruses explain

[Megan, Cueball, and White Hat are standing in a group.]

Cueball: COVID has made me so curious about colds. The next time I get one, I want to know which virus it is specifically.

Cueball: A rhinovirus? RSV? Mild influenza? Or something weird like metapneumovirus?

[They begin to talk together.]

Megan: How distinct are they? Could you learn to tell them apart?

Cueball: See, I wonder!

White Hat: I could get a sequencer from work…

[Caption above the panel:]

Several years later…

[In this panel, Cueball is sitting on the left, Megan is sitting on the right, and White Hat is standing at the far right. Megan is coughing, her hair frazzled. There is a tissue box in the middle, and discarded tissues lie on the ground.]

Cueball: Ah yes, this one has the rich, full-bodied bouquet of RSV, but the heady congestion lends it a lingering rhinovirus nosefeel.

Megan: *Cough*

Megan: Quite right!