it's not because of you!

as some of you already know, i have been down with a persistent cough recently, robbing me of my voice and my beauty sleep at night.

the illness started last friday and progressively deteriorated from a mild sporadic cough to rapid successive coughs that can involuntarily drive me to tears. today, i even choked on air because i couldn't inhale in time before my next coughing fit set in. ahh, and to make things worse, coughs are especially embarrassing on buses and trains. people stare at you (even though you could be wearing a mask or using a tissue to cover your mouth) and they avoid you like plague.

but anyways, ever since my condition became more obvious and publicised (i shouldn't have broadcasted it through my facebook status), i have had numerous people coming up to me to claim responsibility. A said that she passed to me. B said he passed to me. C said she passed to me. everybody is saying that they passed the virus to me! and some of them even sounded adamant about it despite my protests.

so i have been very amused and yet puzzled by this... influx of similar responses. why am i sick because of somebody else? why can't my cough be a progression of my flu from christmas? or a result of my body's detoxification after my recent change in lifestyle? or my insufficient intake of water that causes some heatiness in my body?

with the surge of people coming forth to tell me that they are the source of my cough, i feel that my internal locus of control has been shrank to the size of a pea. it makes me wonder why people have been responding in that way - is it because they think that i might feel better if i blame them for it? or is it because they feel guilty? or is it simply because they have an inflated sense of responsibility over others?

i don't mean to offend anyone, and i do appreciate the amount of concern that many people have showered upon me. i just think that most of us are so inclined to commit the common mistake in empirical research - establishing a causality when there is none. if event A, and event B happens subsequently, it just illustrates a correlation, not a casual relationship. so for example, if i fall sick, and then you fall sick, it could mean

1. casuality: i caused you to fall sick (or vice versa because the direction of influence cannot be determined without a solid experimental design)
   
2. the presence of other mediating factors: the bad weather is the cause of us falling sick, or a third party is the one who is spreading to you and me
   
3. conincidence: we just happen to fall sick after one another
   

if there are so many possibilities, how can we be so sure of one?

i hope i didn't bore you with the example and some technical jargon. but if there is one message i hope you would take home, it would be that correlation does not imply casuality. so don't jump to conclusions, and don't feel over-responsible for the plight of everyone around you.