Bugs

Why seniors are not getting swine flu
Senior citizens appear to have dodged the bullet when it comes to swine flu.

[...]
The medical director is not surprised, saying the fact that the elderly have lived longer, plays a key role.

"It's thought that they built up some immunity to past exposure," said Dr. Lisa Clark, medical director of Presbyterian Village.
[...]

My sentiments exactly.

Try as you might, you just can't avoid every single bug out there. You can wash your hands and apply sanitizer every time you take your rubber gloves off, and like it or not you will still be exposed to some cooties.

Granted, those precautions cut down on contracting a lot of bugs on various surfaces, but there are also critters floating around in the air.
Germ-o-phobes would do well on occasion to let themselves be exposed to more cooties, so their immune system could do its job and build up its strength to protect you down the line.

I get a chuckle out of some people I see. They commence to wiping down doorknobs, keyboards, armrests on chairs, telephones, ... everything people touch. If there's a plague of sort going around the office and Jane sneezes on her keyboard just before she's called me for some tech support, then yes. I have a tendency to wash my hands right after I touch it. But good gawd. You just can't shelter yourself from everything all the time.

Back in the old days when I was a coal miner, we had no running water. Well, we did, but it was pumped from a stagnant pond of water that had already circulated through the machinery and the mine. It was definitely not fit for culinary usage. You didn't want to use it to wash your hands. And hand sanitizer wasn't something that anyone used back in the 70's or 80's, so there was none of that around.

Your hands would usually be covered in coal dust, rock dust, hydraulic oil, WD-40 and so on. If you had to take a shit during your shift you wiped your ass, then rubbed your hands with some rock dust (pulverized limestone) to 'clean' them.

So come lunch time, whatever you ate with your fingers would end up having smudges of the days work on it. But you know what? You didn't give a shit. You were hungry, and you ate your lunch. Grit, grime and all.

I very rarely get sick. And I firmly believe that a part of that is due to not taking antibiotics any more than I have to, and not trying to sequester myself from all the world's ills. If I feel some sort of bug trying to get the better of me I'll down some zinc to help out the immune system, but going to the doctor is a last resort.

We have all sorts of new or mutated bugs on this planet mostly because people have tried to overprotect themselves or their kids, and the shit is catching up with us.


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