Nothing new under the sun? Yeah, right

I’ve heard it said there’s nothing new under the sun and that might be right. A lot of people are stuck in same old/same old, their youthful ambition sucked from them as certainly as life rumbles on.

But every now and then something arises that shatters the ennui and forces us to wonder what the heck is going on. Take last week, for example. We all know there’s no cure for the common cold and people have for centuries battled sniffles and sneezes with little success. Despite incredible scientific advances, there’s not much we can do but let a cold run its course when it decides to invade the body.

My mom used to apply Vick’s VapoRub so heavily it was like goose grease on a distance swimmer, but that stuff worked wonders, didn’t it? If you were stuffed up, you could breathe. And the obligatory chicken soup was always warm comfort for a little kid completely run down by persistent sneezing, wheezing and coughing.

Other folks have said a good shot of whiskey or rum will turn the trick, as will hot toddies, saunas, nose drops or medicine cupboard standards like Benlyn or Buckley’s Mixture.

However, recent news from the U.S. makes me believe we’ll never get a handle on the common cold. A newly discovered superbug has been determined to be the cause of at least 10 deaths in America this fall, a mutated strain of the common cold that’s resistant to antibiotics.

It makes me wonder what’s going on out there, and how stuff like this ends up in circulation. I’m not a doomsayer by nature, but you have to ask: where did this come from?

And think how easily cold and flu are communicated: a simple sneeze expels millions of germs into the air and they can be transmitted by a handshake, picked up from doorhandles, shopping carts, or a child’s kiss before bedtime. You name it.

That this new, drug-resistant bug is south of the border is way too close for comfort, especially since I have small kids whose immune systems aren’t fully developed yet. Experts say the cases in the U.S. are unrelated at this point and it’s possible the bug is an isolated albeit interesting anomaly. Yeah, right.

One gentleman suggested that instead of fixating on this particular mutation, we should concentrate on getting flu shots because that’s what out there at the moment. A flu shot won’t protect against the superbug, he said, but it’s a great way to minimize the risk of getting sick with flu this winter.

I had a shot last week and recommend it. As much as folks like to snuff that they never get sick, the naysayers are the ones who are hit hardest and most likely to infect everyone they meet. Allow me to reference the communicability issue again.

Sure, it’s a bit of a crapshoot, but I’d rather roll the dice. The Public Health Agency of Canada contends the world is overdue for influenza pandemic and although I’m reluctant to cry wolf, the truth is businesses, organizations and international health agencies are ramped up in anticipation of such an outbreak. It scares the dickens out of me because the PHA predicts the virus could infect between 15 and 35 per cent of the population in this country.

Nothing new under the sun? Hardly. Way too much, in fact. Pity, too, we deny the reality and refuse to see what’s right before our eyes.