Just as swallows leave San Juan Capistrano on the Day of San Juan and return on St. Joseph’s Day, when the kids return to school and day cares from Christmas vacation, reported diseases in all populations climb. No longer content with swapping their common germs within the familia, they sniffle, hack and leave traces of fluids that are captured by acquaintances and refined into super bugs. The cycle continues.
It is also when the flu season begins to heighten. The last week of 2016 had more cases than the previous three months combined. There had been seven deaths reported in North Carolina through that time period. Robeson County had one recently that was not in that total. But there may be more as not all deaths are attributed to flu although that could have been an underlying cause. Those most vulnerable are the old, the young and the compromised. Annual flu shots remain the No.1 defense for the severe effects of the flu.
Along that same vein, suspected cases of food poisoning have been reported. There has been no location that could be determined to be a source. But while we are at it, let us look at Norovirus. It is also called the winter vomiting bug, food poisoning or stomach flu. It is most notorious for turning cruise ships around when it runs rampant through the ship’s population and crew. As the nicknames indicate symptoms are vomiting, diarrhea — it is the most common cause of this in adults and children — and stomach cramps. People are infected by eating or drinking contaminated food or drinks, consuming raw or undercooked oysters, or eating contaminated raw vegetables and fruits. It can also be acquired by touching a surface that has been infected and then subsequently touching your nose, mouth or eyes. Along with proper cleaning, hand hygiene remains extremely important. While alcohol-based hand sanitizers have some positive effect, using soap and water to wash your hands is more effective as the rubbing of hands during rinsing cleans better. There is too much reliance on the hand sanitizers being the end-all of hand cleaning and this virus needs more attention than that.
And in another indication that the end is near, the “drive-thru” sequoia in California toppled over during the recent rain storms. This tree was 2,000 years old, but like many of our trees here, it had a very shallow root system. The tunnel cut into it back in the 1880s actually played a part in weakening the tree as a whole. Perhaps the take-home message is that despite something being 27 feet around and tremendously tall and firm, without a good grounding system, it really is fragile — maybe just like humans.
