During a pandemic, a simple cough can turn into a weapon

A woman coughs on a state trooper and claims she has coronavirus.

A man coughs on a medical employee who is wearing a mask, telling her the mask won’t help her.

The pandemic surging across the country has turned into a sick joke — and perhaps something more sinister — as some people turn a simple cough into a weapon.

“This pandemic is pushing human behavior to its extreme in so many ways,” said Frank Farley, a psychology professor at Temple University and former president of the American Psychological Association.

He pointed to the heroism — the doctors and nurses and other front-line workers. He said the positive heroism is astounding.

“Then sort of creeping up in the backdrop is some of this negative stuff,” he said. “To weaponize this horror, I guess in a sense we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s bringing out the worst in some people.”

The fear of the highly infectious virus has led most to remain vigilant and follow mandates to wear masks and stay home. For others, it has pushed them to lash out using the latest fear at hand.

Farley said there are three broad reasons that people use aggression and violence, which he said is what the phenomenon of coughing on someone and claiming to be ill can fall under. The first is to release anger and frustration. The second is to manipulate a person or situation. The third is for retaliation.

“One of the things that some people have been chafing at is the rules and regulations, the likes of which we’ve never seen,” he said. “(Governments) are ordering that you can’t go out, ordering you to stay in your home, your job situation is shut down. If you think of those three broad categories — my God, they might apply to all of these things.”

On Tuesday, a North Huntingdon man charged with burglary is accused of fighting, coughing and spitting on state troopers, claiming he had coronavirus. Joseph R. Good Jr., 35, of Westmoreland City was jailed on multiple charges.

Earlier this month, state police charged a North Huntingdon woman who was accused of coughing on a fast-food worker and saying, “I hope you get covid-19 and die.” The woman, Sharon K. Powell, was charged with disorderly conduct, assault and other charges.

A Carlisle man was charged March 24 after he was accused of coughing in the face of a recovering pneumonia patient. The man, Daniel Tabussi, faces assault and other charges.

In Luzerne County in late March, a supermarket had to dump $35,000 worth of groceries after a woman is alleged to have purposefully coughed on produce, meat and bakery products.

“Why would you do that?” Farley asked. “Due to your frustration? Your anger? Are you attempting to manipulate a situation? It’s hard to know that one.”

The bizarre behavior isn’t limited to Pennsylvania.

A St. Louis man was charged in late March after an incident earlier that month in which police say he filmed himself licking a row of deodorant at Walmart and asking, “Who’s scared of coronavirus?” He posted the video online, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The man, 26-year-old Cody Pfister, was charged with terroristic threats.

In New Jersey, the state Attorney General charged 50-year-old George Falcone with terroristic threats, harassment and obstruction of justice after he is alleged to have coughed on a Wegman’s employee and told her that he had the coronavirus.

The situation unfolded March 22 after the woman asked Falcone not to stand so close to an open display of prepared food, according to the AG’s office. Instead, he moved closer to her and coughed, saying he was infected.

Hours after those charges were announced, the Department of Justice made public a memo in which Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen urged federal prosecutors to consider terrorism charges against those who spread or threaten to spread the virus on purpose.

According to ABC News, Rosen’s memo indicated that “because coronavirus appears to meet the statutory definition of a ‘biological agent’ ” under the law, “such acts potentially could implicate the Nation’s terrorism-related statutes.”

Steven Taylor, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, told The Washington Post that many younger perpetrators are exhibiting “stress-induced antisocial behavior.”

“They wish this was all over,” he told the Post, “and they have a personal sense of invincibility anyway.”

Others, he said, are trying to be agents of chaos.

It’s a theory that Farley posed as well: thrill-seeking risk-takers.

In his research, he has come to identify two types of risk-takers: those who take positive risks and those who take negative risks. The latter are looking for destructive thrills. He calls them “Type T” personalities.

“It’s for the thrill of it, the thrill value,” he said, noting that the coughing behavior is a risk, one that people are being arrested for. The types of people who are engaging in that behavior are the ones who already were destructive thrill-seekers before the pandemic.

“They’re going to go out there and push the envelope,” he said.