You may remember the tragic story of the Boy In The Bubble.
Born in 1971 with a severely compromised immune system, David Vetter survived
until the age of 12 protected from the microbial dangers of the outside world by devices such as a large sheeted plastic isolation chamber.
The Vetter story as a seventies television movie starring John Travolta.
He lived his life, said the ad, "in a plastic prison."
If we think of our immune system as a protective shield,
every novel virus, and certainly one capable of fueling a pandemic, is distinguished by its ability to initially evade that defense.
Our normally tough-as-nails and taken for granted immune system can be caught completely off guard when the virus launches its sneak attack.
This is especially the case for those of us whose immune systems have already begun to take hits due to aging.
Why our bodies fail to adequately maintain the biological weaponry that so effectively cleared foreign invaders in our youth is still a bit of
a mystery. But as surely as our skin will wrinkle and our hair will turn gray, our immune system is destined to fade. You may be unnerved to
learn that by the time you reach 80 years of age your microbial defense capabilities will likely be comparable to those of a toddler!
This is like doing away with the computer-automated anti-missile gattling guns found on an aircraft carrier and replacing them with BB guns!
Your immune system, operating at peak capacity, is like this precision-guided close in weapons system.
To invading microbes it is a formidable adversary.
When your immune system is compromised you are at the mercy of good fortune and good hygiene.
Now, it may be that you are naturally fearful of coming into contact with germs, and you already take extreme precautions to avoid them:
>> Washing your hands with soap like crazy on returning home...
>> Wiping down your faucets and your door knobs...
>> Chloroxing the heck out of your keys, your credit card, your spectacles, phone and whatever else you
might have touched when you ventured out into the contaminated landscape...
But you only need to miss one item, one time, for it to have all been in vain. One careless misstep, one stray finger venturing into your
eye or nose is enough to seed
some unwelcomed
infection.
In other words, it is only a matter of time, and then...
It may be through no fault of your own that you become exposed to
any number of emerging viruses or other infectious agents capable of hijacking your cellular machinery for their own ill-gotten gains.
There is always a limit to just how much caution you can take, and just how much ingenuity
you can apply to trying to outrun a foe you cannot see!
This is why we will often look to the possibility of a vaccine to limit the damage wrought by a highly contagious pathogen.
Historically, vaccines have an extremely good safety record. Yet polling indicates 1 out of 4 Americans
are suspicious of government efforts to produce reliable vaccines, even during times of pandemic infection.
They can stimulate an immune response in our bodies which can last for years.
The measles vaccine confers protection for life against the measles virus and indicates one end of the spectrum of stimulated immunity. At the
other end of the spectrum the influenza vaccine protects against seasonal strains of influenza for periods generally less than 5 months.
But whether the expected protection is long lasting or short, if your immune system is not up to the job it may not happen at all, or the response
may be so feeble as to be entirely useless as a means of protection.
An immune system hobbled by age, or by frailty, or by chronic inflammation (either overt or hidden) is a serious risk to one's longevity.
A strong immune system is a predictor of long life. In that sense it is likely more valuable to you than almost anything else you hold precious in
your life.
This is something I have known for a very long time.
I think many of us are aware of this. And yet I know that in my case I grew complacent over the years and allowed my attention to drift elsewhere.
This is one of the major failings of human beings. We repeatedly refuse to acknowledge the warning signs. Unless we can identify a "clear and present"
danger we will let our guard down.
From an advertisement for penicillin made by Schenley Laboratories (1944). Development of the drug as an antibiotic
languished until World War II when it became a lifeline for American troops in the battlefield.
After the discovery of penicillin in 1928 we successfully devised all manner of pharmaceutical interventions to fight off bacterial infections.
Then we over-prescribed these medications until now nearly every harmful bacterium has become resistant to them and our protective "bug shield"
of life-saving antimicrobials is disappearing.
As a result, by the year 2050 more people are likely to die from infection than from inoperable tumors [O'Neill-2014].
Yet nothing will be done about this until people are dying in numbers so large that the problem becomes impossible to ignore.
Of course, some of us will be affected more than others will...
Those who are young, who are lean, who are blessed with usually good health - this group benefits from a degree of immunological protection
that tends not to be present in those for whom these attributes have fallen away over time.
Loss of immune response tends to be particularly pronounced in:
