JAMES LORIEGA
The tragic situation that we-along with the rest of the world-find ourselves in has forced us to make sweeping adjustments to our routine activities and interactions. Safety protocols involving masks, gloves, and proper coughing and sneezing must be practiced prescribed distances must be adhered to, and rigorous measures of hygiene must be implemented and maintained. Yet, while health officials stress that we minimize our contact with others, their rarely-enforced mandates are not uniformly adhered to by many members of the public that we encounter in our minimized but inevitable excursions from our 'shelters.' Doctors’ offices and clinics, pharmacies and drug stores, mass transit, supermarkets, barber shops and beauty salons, public parks, and an inestimable number of necessary venues can be the scene of unhealthy encounters with individual unconcerned with the well-being of others-or even of their own. This volume of the Katsura Otoko series will present the reader with potential strategies for avoiding and evading such de facto assailants who, without raising a fist or a weapon, can render you greater harm than the armed mugger who demands your wallet. A wallet some might otherwise surrender to avoid receiving a sneeze on their face.
