I’ve said it before. There are too many choices in the world. We’re living in a country in which almost everyone has drinking water piped right into their house but grocery stores have entire aisles devoted to branded tap water in plastic bottles. It’s paralyzing.
But it’s a brave new world, and now we’ve got too many choices in disease too.
Admittedly you had a lot of diseases to choose from back a century or two. You had your dropsy and your flux and Yellow Fever and Scarlet Fever and lots of polka-dotted fevers. It wasn’t as complicated though. Mostly people didn’t get old enough to get some of our crappier diseases, and your options for treatment boiled down to Opium or Death.
But by the time I came along, they were getting a serious handle on this business. They’d already almost knocked out one pox and were taking aim at another. Kids a bit younger than me never did get measles or chicken pox or diphtheria or polio. Antibiotics kicked bacterial ass right and left. At a certain point in my lifetime, all anybody ever got was a cold or the flu. There may have been gradations but not important enough for anyone to make a distinction. “It’s just a cold,” we’d say, hacking away in the concert hall, or “I don’t know—some kind of flu bug.”
In fact that “some kind of flu bug” covered a lot of territory. Influenza has some specific symptoms to it but we didn’t care: we smacked that label on everything from hangover to getting into some bad oysters. Anything you couldn’t sneeze into a Kleenex was some kind of flu. Any time an orifice is used in an extracurricular fashion: flu.
Shoot. It used to take a lot to keep us in bed. There wasn’t a respiratory virus we didn’t want to share. Everybody showed up for work no problem. Everyone swapped snot, everyone went on and on about whatever they had. We did okay. Nobody you knew ever checked out. Just random old people and people who probably had it coming for one reason or another. All the legacy viruses had been consigned to the history books. In fact, it was hard to get super sick unless you had a drug habit.
But now it’s gotten out of hand. Our antibiotics are so over us; they’re retiring. Now we’re back to having too many diseases. It started a decade or two ago. There’d be rumors of cheap new viruses stamped Made In China and sent out into the world, but they mostly didn’t get any traction.
Until COVID. And then they made a vaccine, and a booster, and a few auxiliary vaccines and boosters, and this year’s flu vaccine recipe, and viruses and sub-viruses with names that must contain at least eight characters including one upper-case and one lower-case letter and a number.
So instead of everyone happily swapping snot and the population coming up one short now and then, now we’ve got the dang wild West. You’ve got complete strangers coughing in the store and hollering “It’s just allergies” and everyone else running for cover. You’ve got people eyeing each other with suspicion even if they’re all unarmed Democrats.
I kept up with it avidly in the beginning of COVID years. We were learning along with the experts, as the thing went along. I thought when the vaccine showed up that we could skim off Robert Kennedy Jr. and some of the other weirdos and the rest of us would go about our lives with COVID in the rear view mirror, just like smallpox. But no. Every year it’s something new. Some cult somewhere decides to make a ritual out of sucking on bats and Mother Nature shakes her germy head and thinks: Shoot. What morons. Might as well take out everyone else too.
So now we have RSV. Supposedly we’ve had that my whole life but I don’t believe it. I do not know what it is. I don’t know how it’s transmitted or how crappy it makes you feel or how likely it is to take you out. I am acronymed out. I have a new plan. I’m going into the clinic every year, and roll up my sleeve, or bend over, and I’m going to say “Top me up, baby. Gimme whatever you got.”
Respiratory syncytial virus….I’ve had some experience with it, as have most in the medical game. Actually, there are darn few kids that haven’t had it by the time they reach pre-school age.
In reality, it’s pretty much like what is called ‘the common cold’, in terms of symptoms and treatment. Except….
If you’re auto-immune deficient, for any reason, and particularly if you are young, it’s a serious issue.
In the mid-90’s when I was with a large medical center in our big neighbor to the north, one floor was entirely pediatric oncology patients, most of whom had gotten a bone marrow transplant. On a friday, I was asked to come up to do tests on some patients who were showing symptoms. I went in in full contamination garb, tested some children. There were 18 kids on the ward, each in private rooms.
When I came back on Monday, 4 were alive. RSV had taken out almost the entire section of children.
So, for most of us it’s no big deal. If you’re very old, and young with issues, it can be a big deal.
Holy moly. And I’d really never heard of it until a few years ago.
From what I’ve heard (via Paul, via NPR) the “common cold” was very serious before it became common. People died from it. Now, it’s so tame that people go to work with one, take drug store remedies, and get on with their lives. I hate when people will say they “have flu” and then are back at work the next day. Sorry, people — that isn’t the flu. I’ve had the flu twice in my life, both times when fairly young, and it laid me out for the better part of the week each time. I didn’t want to eat. I just slept most of the time. The last time, i actually hallucinated… which was actually pretty cool. I knew at the time that I was only hallucinating, and even so, it looked and felt real, and it was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had. It was definitely worth the flu! And when I finally felt like eating, i had an Italian hoagie.
I’ve heard that one of the reasons antibiotics no longer work as well anymore is that doctors over-prescribed them. They KNOW that antibiotics don’t work on viruses — only bacteria. And yet, when patients came in with a cold, expecting a pill to get rid of it, doctors would prescribe an antibiotic — knowing it wouldn’t work — but the patient was expecting SOMETHING, so the doctors thought, “What the hell. It’s harmless, and will keep them quiet. When they feel better in a couple days, they’ll think it’s a miracle.” But it apparently wasn’t harmless, because they were using it so much when it wasn’t needed. So now it’s not working as well. On a side note, when i was young, my dermatologist prescribed antibiotics because he said it would get rid of my acne. (It didn’t. But i DID get frequent yeast infections. He also prescribed topical things to “dry up” my acne. It didn’t. But it DID dry out my skin and make it red, so I had THAT as well as the acne.)
My old doctor from a long time ago once told me that if you have a cold and treat it, it will be gone in seven days. Untreated, it will last a week. He definitely did not prescribe antibiotics on demand.
My doctor of old, Dr. Lance, would use the same prescription for a cold…treat it and it will be gone in two weeks, or leave it alone and it will be gone in a fortnight.
I had something nasty last June. It wasn’t Covid according to the multiple tests I took, but it acted like the Covid variety I had in 2022. Coughed and sneezed until it felt like my back and my ribs were breaking.
It finally settled out although my sinuses felt full. One day at work I felt the need to blow my nose and proceeded to empty about an eighth of a cup of thick creamy matter out of my left nostril. A week later there was a repeat emptying the right nostril. For a few blessed days my sinuses were so empty it felt like mountain breezes blowing through my head.
You’re in NJ, and I’m in DE. Here in Delaware, they call it “The Delaware Drip.” That is actually a medical term here. I heard it from my doc, and a friend from his. Basically, it’s post-nasal drip, but on steroids. One of the reasons i wake up a few hours earlier than I need to is this. An 1/8 of a cup is 2 tablespoons. That sounds about right. And it is always one nostril or the other. The thing is, in our neck of the woods, we have a low elevation, plus a lot of humidity, which creates problems. Some people use neti pots, but I prefer a saline nasal spray. I don’t have to boil the water and get the measurements right. Just spray and get on with my life.
I’ve been a chemist and I am a cook. I think I’ve got a pretty good feel for measurements.
My dentist tells me that for some reason people from our part of NJ have bigger sinus cavities than elsewhere. Last time he X-rayed me he said mine were massive. It’s not really friendly when the barometer is shifting.
Every time we watch the national news, we get invited to try a new drug for some new ailment. I’m not buying that story anymore. We have home COVID swabs, and besides the shot for shingles which I had a decade ago, unless my internist needs me to have something, NOPE! If I can live a relatively healthy life 3 yrs after 3 brain surgeries. I’m opting out of new illnesses!
Just an eensy bit too much information there Bruce–not that I ever want to discourage you in any way. And as long as we’re talking about fluid volumes: the average menstrual period yields three tablespoons of blood. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
THREE tablespoons!!! Just like Bruce, I’m a cook and eyeball measurements. When I was young, there was NO WAY it was only that much! I used hospital pads (way thicker and more absorbent), and went through one every couple hours. They were meant to get one through the night. If i actually trusted that, I’d be doing laundry the next day.
This may be TMI, but WTH.
Flu = vomit. If you’re not on your knees paying homage to the porcelain gods, it’s not the flu.
THAT’S not the flu.
I’m with you, I’ll roll up my sleeves every year for whatever they’re giving. I don’t plan on dying young!
Mike is spot on when it comes to RSV. Rich, with multiple myeloma, went in for his weekly chemo infusion and picked it up there in the treatment area. in very short order it went to pneumonia and we subsequently learned that the whole treatment bay was down with RSV. We were told to watch and treat at home unless we couldn’t and it ended up we could but not before he shared it with his dearly beloved. NEVER have we been so sick individually and together for what seemed like forever. Bend over and get topped up, Murr. In other news, it’s going on 3 years and we’re planning our next summer vacation. Maybe back to the PNW.
“Bend over?” Come on over! We have very few tornadoes!
I’m not sure about this: “Any time an orifice is used in an extracurricular fashion: flu.”
You are correct to be suspicious. But I can’t write about everything at once, even though it seems like I do.
Years ago when I was working full-time and dreaded the Common Cold, I used an over-the-counter nasal spray that was supposed to shorten the duration and lessen the severity. To them, the makers of Zicam (zinc gluconate; Matrixx Initiatives, Inc), I gave up my sense of smell. I thought anything sold in the pharmacy was going to be a Government-approved, safe, effective product. I was wrong.
Now we know that zinc in the nose can cause anosmia, which is a complete and permanent loss of smell and taste.
In my case, I still have a faint sense of smell and my sense of taste is fairly good. But I so miss the fragrance of freshly chopped basil and a thousand other things good and bad.
Matrixx paid out $12 million in a class action settlement.
I’m hoping that the loss of smell many Covid patients experienced may lead to further research that might help me get my sense of smell back.
I recommend subscribing to FDA and FTC newsletters. Sometimes they can help you avoid the next harmful thing.
I remember reading about that! It’s a real shame, because the zinc tablets work great.
Perhaps you might not take this as a compliment, though I hope you do. Your writing style reminds me of Andy Rooney. Humor mixed with truth, an excellent combination!!
I have chin hairs, too.
Yeah… but I bet we both envy his eyebrows!
RSV is highly contagious and unfortunately could take out premises or immunosuppressed kids. There were designated RSV wards so that it didn’t spread all through a pediatric hospital.