A very sick winter

[nancylebov]

I got through alright, but it seems as though my social circle had many more people sick for more days (sometimes weeks) than is at all typical. Flus, bad colds, bronchitis, nameless cruds.....and with no obvious explanation. Afaik, the problems with the flu vaccine didn't have much to do with it--at least some of the illness wasn't flu, and I haven't heard people saying that if only they been able to get the shot, they'd have been ok.

My default explanation for cruds is temperature swings--it seems as though when the temperature varies from near-freezing to almost balmy in a day, people get sick. I'm not sure whether it's just rough on people for the temperature to vary that much, or if the high odds of not wearing the right gear mean that people get chilled and/or overheated. In any case, there haven't been enough temperature swings around here (at least) to explain the crud level. Any alternate theories?

Comments

[madfilkentist]

My own theory -- hypothesis -- guess, backed by nothing, is that it's dry winter air making membranes more vulnerable to infection. Temperatures vary just as much in summer, and I've heard of experiments in which chilling people failed to increase the incidence of colds. There's also the popular theory that people crowd together more in winter; but if this is true, there should be more cruds in urban than in rural areas. I don't know whether this is the case or not but tend to doubt it.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

That's got some plausibility, though it seems to me that people are generally more likely to get sick in the spring than the winter. Also, it doesn't explain this year, assuming that I've noticed a real uptick. Maybe it's just that I'm reading more ljs and hearing about more people's illnesses.

As for dry air, it's been a mild winter around here, so I'd think that indoor air isn't quite as dry.