The cold and flu season approaches, and this year we have a new variation: The HINI virus. It appeared last spring, and now health officials worry that it might resurrect this fall. This is a serious virus.

Treat all viruses as serious, and get your vaccinations. The only protections we have against viruses, as compared to bacteria, are vaccinations.

In particular, get your Whooping Cough Vaccination. Easily spread, you are at risk from unvaccinated students, especially those parents who are foolish enough to not vaccinate their children against killer diseases.

Whooping Cough is at epidemic status in California. It is fatal in babies and young children, and easily spread from adults to young children.

If you are inoculated, and still have a persistent cough, or chest-like illness, get a TB Test. Once almost gone, Tuberculosis has come back, and increased with the advent of AIDs. The TB Bacteria can lie exist for years encapsulated in your lungs, only to break out into full-blown TB when your immune system is compromised, among other reasons.

In the meantime, we have misused anti-biotics to the extent that we now have fewer anti-biotics that will work against such bacterial infections as Tuberculosis.

TB was called the White Plague in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and was one of the several diseases that created reasons for the existence of Ellis Island and the efforts to identify those ill with it. Immigrants would carry TB, Typhoid, and other killer infections into the crowded neighborhoods in large cities, where it spread rapidly. On old census forms, TB is called Consumption.

A WARNING

Next Warning: Get a Whooping Caugh Shot. We have an Epidemic, espcially ini California

The Flu, and Information, Link to U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC)

The United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) has issued guidelines and tips for protecting yourself from the flu. While no one can guarantee that you will not get it, you may reduce your risk by following a few simple precautions.

Those of you who know me,know that, of course, I am going to tell you what those precautions might be.

Flu Shots: Discuss with your parents and your physician.

Learn the symptoms of Swine (HINI) and other Flu.

The United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) tells us the HINI flu is most dangerous for young people and pregnant women. Remember that 36,000 people die each year in the U.S. from regular types of flu, along with hundreds of thousands world wide, so don’t be overly worried – just take sensible precautions.

Ask your physician the conditions under which you should rush to an emergency room where you will be sitting with hundreds of other people who are also sick (and foolish to have put themselves at additional risk by being in an area crowded with sick people). Hospitals are required to treat everyone who comes through their doors, so they will be crowded with people who may not need to be there.

This year, with the flu concerns abounding, become obsessive about germs.

Precautions You Can Take:

Stay away from people who are sick or who complain of not feeling well.

DON’T SHARE FOOD WITH OTHERS, and DON’T SHARE BEVERAGES.

Avoid touching your face – mouth, nose, eyes.

Stay away from anyone coughing, sneezing, who has a runny nose, sore throat, nausea, fever.

Avoid Crowds

Don't rush off to the emergency to mingle with all those other sick people. Know the danger signs, otherwise stay put.

Stay home if you are sick.

Wash your hands frequently, and always wash them when you arrive at home from school, shopping, or any place where you touch things handled by others.

Carry around a bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Do not use anti-bacterial hand wash lotion.

Colds, Flu and Mononucleosis are viruses, not bacteria, and thus the germs are unaffected by anything anti-bacterial products.

The Center for Disease Control recommends face masks.

Colleges are recommending that students wear them when kissing. I know, I know. Don't shoot the messenger.

Other Common Sense Suggestions

Never touch anything in a public rest room or your dorm restrooms, (for the rest of your life, in fact).

Too many people NEVER wash their hands.

If you must touch anything in a rest room, only touch things before you wash your hands, this includes faucets.

Don’t touch door handles without holding a paper towel in your hands and then throwing it in the receptacle.

Use those disinfectant towels located near the grocery cart section to wipe down the handles of the cart.

Wash your hands after grocery shopping, and wipe down cans and packages; items handled by others can carry pin worm eggs – a common parasite in children, let alone any germs carried around by all the people who have handled the item before you picked it up.

Use the “Heated Dry” feature on dishwashers. The only way to kill germs on dishes is to dry them on high heat, so hit the heat button.

Same old, same old, improve your resistance to disease by eating properly and by getting adequate rest. You can help yourself in this area by using better time management skills to organize your obligations.

• KEPT QUIET: Wind energy turbines kill hundreds of thousands of migratory bats each year in the U.S. The bats do not fly into the turbines. The suction created by the turbines affects their lungs and they suffocate.

  Their population is decreasing, rapidly.

  These are the species of bats that eat millions of mosquitoes and other disease carrying insects EVERY NIGHT.

  In addition, the turbines kill hundreds of thousands of raptors,who fly into them, and are killed. These also eat insects and rodents.

  Wind and Solar together provide less that one percent of our energy.

Don’t go around others when you are sick.

Many schools work to keep their environment as germ free as possible, since it is teenagers and college students who are the most at risk.

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