05 December 2007

Cold...and Flu


I am going to make this short and sweet, since there is white stuff in the air, and you know what that means here: madness.

It is not that big a deal, not for stolid citizens of mid-western origin. But I have adapted to this swampy town, and now recoil in horror when the season has finally changed and the prediction is for snow.

My pals back in Michigan can snigger if they want, but there is nothing to fill the imagination with terror as the thought of a Virginian with a busy schedule and armed with a powerful SUV hurtling down an ice-slicked road.

Naturally, this is a day that features a meeting somewhere in Maryland, which is traumatic enough under any circumstances, but on a snow day, could turn into an all-day odyssey across the District. Damn.

Anyhow, the prospect of death and dismemberment to accompany a three-hour Powerpoint presentation had to compete with the epiphany on why we get sick when we do.

I was thinking about that, standing out on the fourth floor patio of the tall building in Ballston where I have been spending my time lately. My crisp Brooks Brothers button-down shirt was displaying the characteristics of a sail in the chill wind, fresh delivered from Canada.

Leaves danced vertically in the gale, and for the first time my ears and fingers began to radiate actual pain from the temperature.

Here is the key point to the epiphany: I always get the annual cold around the time I realize that I am not wearing enough clothing. I hate having to find a place for the wet Burburry raincoat, or searching for gloves and scarf. I only get with the program when I have recovered from the near-death experience.

I have come to blame the downward shift in temperature for the sudden onset of the nausea and fever, blaming my refusal to let the attire suitable for Fall's temperate climes die.

The bug itself I blamed on the snotty-nosed kids, coming together once more after their summer apart, and infecting all those suburban dinner tables, which in turn released the baccilus on the unsuspecting workplace by harried Virginians in their SUVs who will not stay home and nurse their illness in private, smearing it on all the doors and handles and phones.

That is the transmission of the common cold, I am informed, which is bacterial. The Flu is a virus, and a different sort of thing altogether.

As it turns out, I have confused cause and effect. The Times laid out the revelation this morning. It is not that the cold weakens our resistance, it is completely the other way around. Scientists have discovered that the cold dry air of winter enhances the survivability of the influenza virus.

Researchers have found that “transmission (is) excellent at 41 degrees….declines as the temperature rises until, by 86 degrees, the virus is not transmitted at all. The virus was transmitted best at a low humidity, 20 percent, and not transmitted at all when the humidity reached 80 percent.”

With the virus more stable in low temperatures, the lower humidity helps to keep the particulate matter of the virus airborne. The higher the moisture content, the more rapidly the virus drops to the floor. Colder temperatures in the upper respiratory tracts of the frantic Virginians also contributes to the enhanced longevity of the virus.

They do not have a flu season in equatorial regions, which given global warming trends, does not provide an incentive to move there. I am invigorated by a clearer understanding of the nature of the transmission mechanism of the pandemics lurking out there.

Of course it doesn't matter, unless I adopt self-contained breather equipment at the office, and now I can't kid myself that wearing a jacket is going to change a thing. It is the properties of the virus and the air itself that are the enemies. Unless I drag out the old SCUBA gear, I am just as vulnerable as before.

So, off to Maryland, armed with information as useless as a Virginian's SUV on an icy road.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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