Catching It

The guy behind the camera caught strep throat. And he didn’t tell me about it so I didn’t know when I came in. And you can catch it from breathing.

But it got me thinking about airborne diseases. You know like meningitis, chicken pox, tuberculosis, influenza.

We’re surrounded by disease!

How is it that people can walk into a highly trafficked public place like an airport and not walk out with like fifty thousand communicable diseases? Because you know somebody in there has got something and they’re just [coughs] spreading it around.

Actually you catch diseases all the time, but you have this thing called an immune system. And it filters out all the yuck that’s trying to get in.

And it doesn’t just start working once you get sick. It can actually keep you from getting sick. It’s like your own little proactive biological task force.

Airborne diseases are spread when pathogens are expelled into the air due to coughing, sneezing, or even talking. No talking camera guy. All day. And I mean it.

Once they’re out and about they hitch a ride on water droplets or dust floating around in the air. Eventually you breathe it in and then? You’ve got a disease. Well, I mean, not yet.

Usually your immune system commandos can take care of the pesky intruder but just like your muscles, you immune system can only do so much work so fast.

The drop zone’s hot! I repeat, the drop zone’s hot! Looks like streptococci! This whole place is swimmin’ in buggies!

When you don’t have a real gun, sometimes you have to make believe.

I got your killer T-cell right here.

So what can you do to give your little white blood cells a helping hand? I think every doctor will agree with this one: wash your hands. Airborne or not, this is the best way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.

And when I say wash, I mean wash. None of this five seconds under the tap just to get wet stuff. I mean use soap and hot water and scrub under your nails and keep working and work and work and work until all those little dirty dirty creatures are gone.

Then you can put your fingers in your mouth. Or up your nose. You can put them wherever you want at that point.

Thankfully there aren’t a lot of common airborne diseases and many of them take a fair amount of time or proximity to get passed on. Most of the stuff we pick up is from touching something and then putting it in your eyes or mouth or like an open cut. Like fecal/oral transmissions. Ugh. Fecal/oral.

When you don’t have a guitar, sometimes you have to pretend.

I know a guy who never washes his hands. How do I know? He goes to the little boys’ room in record time. Every time. But that’s not all. My suspicions were confirmed when he was over at my place. See he went twice and in my house, you can hear if the sink comes on. And it didn’t. Then he shook hands with me on the way out and asked if something was wrong. No, no. Nothing a scrub brush, soap and water and a gallon of hand sanitizer can’t fix.

Oh yeah, that’ll do it. Die, die DIE!

Now whenever he comes around I’m very careful to wash my hands after touching anything that he’s touched. Just in case. It’s not just in case. You know there’s nasty there.

Here’s another tip but it’s not guaranteed to work ’cause nothing really is. When you find yourself surrounded by sickies and you don’t have a really easy escape route, breathe through your nose.

But not deep like that. Shallow breaths.

No joke, that’s what all the little hairs and the mucous membrane in your nose is for. Catch, trap, release. Just don’t eat it.

Aside from that you could always stay away from people who have airborne communicable diseases. Or you could wear a mask everywhere you go and refuse to touch anything that hasn’t been disinfected or sterilize everything with high-intensity ultraviolet light. Or cut off all direct human contact and live in a biosphere. But that’s only if you’re paranoid.

Huh. No diseases in here. Wait, when I potty I have to live in it. This may not have been a great idea.

Transcribed by: Chryss H.

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