I Muse, Therefore I Am

I noticed a spray bottle on my bathroom counter that says it is a "bathroom cleaner."  It also says it "kills 99.9% of viruses & bacteria." I immediately thought, "What about that other .1%?"

Doing a little of what I call research (meaning I googled something) didn't help. Does it take just one germ? Many? If "many" then how many? I would think enough to overcome the human body's natural defenses but there doesn't seem to be any kind of definitive answers as to how many that might be. I guess "how many" would vary wildly based on the efficacy of an individual's immune system.

I went through a period of sickness (1997-1999) where I struggled against what was claimed to be (after I forced the doctors to re-think their diagnoses) a bacterial infection by the Pseudomonas "bug." It might not have been that, they might have still been wrong, I'll never know. Because, eventually, the disease abated and all I was left with is a lingering, intermittent, cough and apparently damaged lungs.  I have lately considered my problem to possibly have been fungal in origin.

I often wonder why I am not germophobic (true name: mysophobic) after suffering from that issue for two years but I am not. Old habits die hard, I suppose. I was raised in the 50's (mostly) when we did not have nearly as many vaccinations available as we do today. Basically, our "vaccinations" were exposure to the normal childhood diseases... measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, mumps, chicken pox, and the like. Most of us survived these. And these illnesses created antibodies which allegedly continue to protect us from future exposures.

We no longer need to do this, expose our children to some nasty disease, because of the miracle of vaccination. My own son was vaccinated for most of the childhood diseases. At least the vaccinations that were available at the time (early 70's), he still came down with the measles and it wasn't even weakened by his vaccination. He later got chicken pox from exposure to a childhood friend (there was no vaccination at the time) and promptly gave it to his mother who hadn't had it in her childhood. I somehow avoided it though neither I nor my mother could remember my having it as a child.

And now we may have ebola to worry about.