Medical paraphrasing, by Rory

As quickly as this ‘cold’ took me over at the weekend, it has equally quickly left me in peace. There are truly some very odd things floating around in the atmosphere this Autumn. I remember reading that we might encounter some unpleasant bugs this year, as we were all kept away from them during the lockdowns and the mask-wearing. Normally, one is exposed to small amounts of pathogens throughout our daily lives, and our body learns to fight them all off. Because we’ve lived such insular, solitary lives for most of the past 18 months, we haven’t been exposed in that way and our bodies have forgotten how to operate that bit of defence. When we encounter something unpleasant now, instead of our immune systems going “Ah – I recognise this. It’s nasty. I’ll fight it off,” it is effectively putting its fingers in its ears and going ‘la, la, la’ while the virus multiplies within us, making us ill. So, instead of having a sore throat or a bit of a temperature for a couple of days while our body sees it off, it breaks through our barriers and sets up home for a while and we end up feeling like utter shit.
I may have got that description slightly wrong – I’m a chemist, not a biologist. But I hope you see the point I’m making. We’re all going to have multiple, weird illnesses this Winter and I’m not looking forward to any of them.

RC 20-10-21