Have You Sanitized Lately?

There has been a lot of news lately about the growing number of viral and bacterial strains that seem to be immune to our antibiotics and meds.  Many medical experts are alarmed about this outbreak and have done extensive research to try and determine why this is happening.  The virtually unanimous conclusion—overuse of antibiotics and sanitizers.  We are so germophobic in this country that some people actually wear gloves or respirator masks when going out into public places in fear of catching something off of a doorknob or breathing in the next bubonic plague.  This phobia has reached levels unseen in our country before.

Now, I grew up in the 1960s and 70’s an age where snotty-nosed kids ran amuck spewing germs out like a battery-operated air freshener.  As kids in the summertime we left the house at sunup, didn’t come home until dark (except for the long stroll back for dinner).  During the course of the day, you went far into the deep recesses of the woods, where you handled everything from mossy tree branches to frogs (sometimes not alive).  Then, there was the foray to the local pond where every kind of biological nightmare was lurking, just waiting for you to be caught in its infective trap.  There were times when you didn’t wash your hands or for that matter see your parents for hours and in the case of camping out overnight— maybe days.

So, what is causing this lurking biological disaster?  Why are we now facing such a potential disaster of humankind?  Well, I believe that ole Grumpy has the answer.  On a recent trip into one the many stores with the “lowest everyday prices,” I noticed something, every other aisle in the store had a liquid hand sanitizer dispenser or individual packets of the magical germ-killing solution.  Wow, I have been inside a surgical center that didn’t have this much sanitizer or sterilizers!  What, has every one of our stores achieved “Chernobyl” status?

Then, there are the moms following behind their kids like royal handmaidens wiping the child with those disinfecting tools.  I watched with astonishment as mothers disinfect their children enough that they could go into surgery without causing an issue.  Is all of that really necessary?  They have sterilized their children to the point where they could traverse the most-completely disease riddled land or the deepest darkest forest with no worries as nothing could possibly survive contact with their sterilized skin.  All of this helicoptering over these kids must surely have other deleterious effects—can you say snowflakes?

As earlier stated, my mother often times had no idea where I was let alone how many infectious things I had handled during that day.  I have tried to envision her following behind me through the woods wiping my hands every two minutes to ensure that I didn’t get sick—are you freaking kidding me?  Or maybe she would be riding behind me on a bike administering that magic solution to sanitize my surely infectious hands (no easy feat going uphill).  As we see again, our absurdity replaces common sense and plays right into the hands of corporate greed.  And of course, there is the waste factor as all of these sanitizing products produce mountains of plastic and foil wrapper waste.

I am no rocket scientist here, but I think the answer to this issue is pretty apparent.  In the name of healthier living, we have destroyed the germs that actually help us survive.  Since the 1990s, moms have become so paranoid about everything that they hover over children like a guardian angel.  But even guardian angels take a break once in a while.  And the stores play no small role in this as they feed the fears through having all of these sanitizers readily available at every corner.  Gotta make sure we keep people in the stores and spending money—ah, corporate greed at every turn.

In the name of being healthy, we are going to wipe ourselves out.  Paranoia replaces common sense, at what point did we lose touch with history or for that matter reality?  So, in the end, we will have successfully sanitized ourselves out of existence, maybe it can be said that the road to extinction is paved with good intentions.

Talk to Ya Later

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2019 All Rights Reserved