Immunity

AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! SWINE FLU!!!!!!!

Ok. I got in my obligatory flu freak out.

I wonder if our society will end because of some stupid bacteria. We-- westernized cultures-- are so paranoid about the almighty, mysterious creatures we call germs. I see people with mini bottles of hand sanitizer on their key chains. (You know that anti-bacterial hand sanitizer and soaps kill the bugs and so speed up the evolution of said germs into super bugs that will not be able to be killed by our anti-bacterial germicides, right?) There was a kid in my high school class that carried around an economy size tub of hand sanitizer and would lather everything he had contact. He had to bring his own keyboard to computer class so he wouldn't ruin the school keyboards with the sanitizer. There's a kid on my college campus that runs around wearing a black cape over his back pack, wielding a cane so that he can push or pull open doors without touching them. I wonder if he is coming to class this week? Then there's one of my friend's mom. She would never bring her youngest son to the nursery at church or take him on play dates because he would always get sick.

NEWSFLASH! God built us with a germ defensive system standard on every make and model of Homo sapien. It's called the immune system! Here's how it works: there are several different kinds of soldiers you have in your immune army. Some of them man watch towers and keep an eye on radar. They are trained to identify and make initial contact with anything they believe to be forgein. These cells will corner anything they feel is suspicious in nature and call up the cells with the weapons. Then the radar cells will instruct the weapon cells to destroy the invader. It may take the rader cells a bit to figure out which particular type of weapon to use on an invader-- a gun, laser or grenade-- but eventually they will find a combination that will work. Crisis averted! Then there are other cells that have the job to check out the dead invader and store away information on what it looks like and what it's tatics were. The rader cells will often call on these invader profile cells to check out invaders before they send in weapons to see if they've encountered this invader before and if so, what weapon cells worked best in the past invasion.

We can boost our immunity by exposing ourselves to varying germs. By doing so we boost the amount of invaders our profiling cells are familiar with and so increase the number of invaders that our defense system recognizes and destroys before we even feel ill. Many of the germs look similiar or have similar tatics so we can store profiles of one of the similar looking ones and be protected from all the ones that look like that germ too. This is the idea behind immunizations.

I must confess, I don't wash my hands or bother with hand sanitizer... unless I've been working with raw meat or I'm taking a shower. I have gotten sick enough to have to stay home for more than one day twice in the past eight years at least. I would however attribute that to getting plenty of exercise everyday too. Exercise makes your blood flow faster and so you tend to flush out germs and other things faster.

I am however promoting being cautious of the impending "pandemic". Do be aware of the people you're around and wash your hands before touching your skin or eat. This bug obviously doesn't have another germ that is similar enough to it that many people's immune system would recognize the invader. I am saying that perhaps everyone could prevent getting sick in general if 1) we were ok with exposing ourselves to some germs to boost our immunity and 2) quit using anti-bacterial sanitizers and soaps and opt for regular soaps and water--which simply get the bugs off our hands-- so we don't make more super bugs.