As soon as I start to feel like I might be getting sick, I immediately take as hot a bath as I can stand for about an hour then immediately cool off with cold water. Seems to do the trick quite well the majority of the time. My partner will go through the full illness while I can mostly nip it in the bud.
There are also some laptop remote control apps in the store
Not sure what is hip and secure currently, years ago I used unified remote, which worked quite well.
Or did you find a better solution and use a real remote with USB receiver?