Opus 2024-155: Ode to Old: Join the Resistance

Why are old people more susceptible to things like the flu?  The elderly are urged to get the flu shot regularly and to be careful when they are out and about.  I wonder if this advice is not part of the high mortality in that age group.  

It is true that we tend to get weaker as we get older.  If we have serious health problems like diabetes and heart disease they will have developed over the years and dragged us down even more.  That much seems like common sense.

I would suggest though that there is something else going on:  Isolation.  One of the realities of life is that our immune system responds to the world we live in.  When I started teaching middle school I went through a regular series of illnesses.  As time went on that decreased in frequency.  After 20 years it became rare.  I remember kids deliberately coughing in my face when they were sick in hopes that I would catch it.  They thought it was funny.  I thought it was funny becuase it didn’t work.  My immune system had been forced into superman mode over the years.

After being gone from education for seven years, I can tell that my defenses are weaker.  One thing that helps is being around my grandchildren.  They bring bugs to the house on a regular basis.  Sometimes it effects me, sometimes not.  

Take your typical stereotype of a senior.  They live in a world devoid of health challenges that their bodies are designed to fight.  They are in assisted living, living alone or in a back room of the house.  They don’t get out and rub elbows much.  Their white blood cells get lazy and scarce.  Their ability to fight back is weakened.  Then you add things like flu shots which may protect them for the season if the drug companies guessed right in which strain would reach out to them.  If they guess wrong then more isolation was in the works.  In a sense the shot, when it works, helps them for the season but makes them weaker for the next round.

I saw some click bait recently that said one in nine American children is now autistic.  I didn’t bother listening because I hate wasting my time of big promises that don’t deliver.  Is it because more children are having problems or is it because the authorities that make a lot of money on autism are changing the standards?  I would guess more of the latter.  The headline also attributed the cause to increased vaccinations.  That does make sense to me.  Where will these children be when they get to be seniors?

Life has a lot of choices to make.  Be thoughtful and realize that they are out to get you.

homo unius libri