jis
Permanent Way Inspector
Staff member
Administator
Moderator
AU Supporting Member
Gathering Team Member
It is actually very important for kids to be exposed to some amount of germs so as to train their immune systems about them. This ability to get trained slowly goes away as one reaches mid-teens. It is much harder for the immune system to handle completely unfamiliar class of germs after that. This is the reason that those of us who suffered through various tropical diseases during our childhood generally handle them, or their cousins, much more effectively than those did not. There is a marked difference in the severity of stomach infection attacks between those who grew up in an endemic environment from those that did not.I think the point has been made about HIV and the fact that it is, in fact, very difficult to transmit. Of all the things to worry about from incidental human contact, that is not one of them. Lets move on from that.
I certainly do not belittle those who take steps to prevent contact with infectious agents, but short of going full Howard Hughes (and a lot of good it did him), in the end I think it is a futile effort. I do the best I reasonably can, and then trust the immune system to do its job. By and large, it seems to work. I just survived a two day encounter with my two-year-old grandson. There may not be a bigger germ carrier than a little kid who spends the day with a bunch of other little kids in daycare. I seem to have escaped unscathed.