Cover of Germs

There is at least one good thing about old age. It means you have been fooled so many times by people who claim to know everything that you stop being a sucker. When you see how many times the experts change their minds about things like ‘health food’ you pretty much ignore them and eat what you like. It’s not just food where you find out that the experts are actually wrong. It works with health too. Take the ridiculous fixation on killing bacteria these days. It’s so mindless that any fool should recognize that killing bacteria is the last thing we want to do.

It makes absolutely no sense that the human body which has been defending us against germs for thousands of years needs special help now. To begin with, the idea is based on a false premise. It assumes that the only good bacteria is a dead bacteria when there are so many bacteria that make life better. Indiscriminate killing of bacteria could make us worse off, not better. It just one more of the crazy ideas that keep cropping up.

The human body is a pretty remarkable system to keep germs under control. It’s not disputable~ We have thousands of years of experience to prove just how resiliently the human body resists disease. There are still some bad boys that occasionally do serious damage but those aren’t your common, garden variety germs. You won’t be picking up the Ebola virus down at the office or anthrax off the cart at the supermarket. Are you one of the foold that uses the sanitizers on your shopping cart? Who decided that we need hand sanitizer to buy groceries anyway. I tell you the world has gone mad.

I can’t explain the hysteria these days about germs. Just try to find a soap these days that doesn’t claim to be antibacterial. I know because I make it a point not to buy that crap and there aren’t many left. Heck, what’s life without germs? How can you grow up strong and healthy if your body never leans to deal with germs. If the antibacterial soaps were actually effective we would end up a race of weaklings.

The one germ I’d be willing to fight is the scaredy cat germ which seems to have taken over America. I grew up in an America unfettered by this madness. We were clean back then. We washed out hands, covered out mouths and all but we weren’t afraid of getting sick from time to time. It was just part of life. Everybody got a cold once in a while and nobody I ever knew got the flu. Today, nobody has a cold. It’s always the flu and it isn’t just any flu these days, it’s swine flu or bird flu, always the big guns. It scares them to death to get sick. People rush to the doctor, demand some medicine and worry. In my day, we just got over it.

The way I see it, the reason people get sick these days is because they went crazy about this antibacterial nonsense. They do everything they can to kill the bad bacteria and kill the good ones while they are at it. They lose both ways. They have protected themselves too much. Everybody is so protected from germs that when one finally gets in, their bodies don’t know what to do about it. Because they protect themselves so much, any germ can make them sick and any illness seems catastrophic.

It turns out that it’s all a marketing gimmick anyway because you have to soak your hands in the stuff for two minutes for it to have any effect so most people are no better off than if they used regular soap. It’s all touchy-freely crap, but these days that’s all that matters. We’ve got overpriced universities full of over-educated know nothings that think it’s their job to tell us how to live. Mother was bad enough but in my day, mother never heard of antibacterial soap and she didn’t depend on anybody to tell her how to raise her kids. These days it’s not just your mother who is telling you what to do. Try to find somebody who isn’t. The mayor of New York wants to tell you what you can drink. What’s going to keep him from deciding that you need to use antibacterial soap. And if New Yorkers are going to let nanny Bloomburg run their lives then it’s probably all over for the rest of us.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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