Cough, cough

Jared Diamond wrote a very interesting book called Guns, Germs, and Steel. Essentially, he asked why the Conquistadors did so well. Why does Peru speak Spanish, rather than Spain speaking Quechua? European diseases killed something like 90% of the native Americans: why didn't American diseases start a new Black Death in europe?

His theory is that in Eurasia we have lots of domesticable animals and, living in close quarters with them for millenia, we became mostly immune to diseases that we ate, drank and breathed constantly. Like an arms race, ever more virulent poxes fought ever sharper antibodies, just to maintain the uniform headache and bit of a cough. When we started talking to people who hadn't been living next door to a pigsty since the Bronze age, they were totally unprepared for our moist, dank, breath.

A university consists of hundreds of young people living in close quarters to each other. I don't want to go so far as to suggest that any of my collegemates are pigs but, you know, the comparison stands. We grow immune to each other's perculiar microbes.

The trouble, of course, is at the start of every academic year a hundred new people arrive from exotic parts, such as Leicester.

We call it Freshers Flu. It's the reason I'm popping Strepsils like they're the latest thing to hit Hollywood.

As Jered Diamons points out, though, these days people travel all over. I can go anywhere in less than the time it takes this Leicester-strain bacteria to die off. The day after tomorrow, I could be breathing on you no matter where you are on earth.

This isn't the age of Aquarius. It's the age of a new world order of Freshers Flu.

Song in my head: "Perfect Circle" by R.E.M.