Could it be we are too clean?

debodun

debodun

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Location
way upstate in New York, USA
Maybe diseases are becoming more virulent because we clean our environments too much. We have no immunity to germs. In the 1800, polio affected the more well-off people because they had better hygiene and could afford cleaning products and took more trouble to clean. The poorer people had less sickness because they were exposed to more dirt and germs and thereby had stronger immunity.
 

Are you sure of your facts about polio striking the poor less? Could we have a link to that please? I do feel you are on to something but yet don't think the folks of Wuhan do all that bleaching, etc. on a regular basis.

Am not saying the Wuhans are dirty, I don't know what they are.
 
There is something to be said for certain strains mutating or adapting much like some of the things anti-biotics used to kill.

But polio and some other things are vaccine related among other issues. I will say if one had to pick a handful of vaccines to take polio probably should be one of them. There are sanitation, nutrition and population density issues in many of these places as well. Poor sanitary conditions make bad things worse. Lack of otc medications to soften the blow doesn't help either. Wonder how many major infections were avoided because we have access to peroxide, neosporin and/or sterile bandages en masse otc.

Alcohol type sanitizers have been causing issues.

https://www.sciencealert.com/superb...nt-to-hospital-alcohol-disinfectant-sanitiser

This is why just keeping ones hands clean with soap is just as important as sanitizer use.
 
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An excerpt from a longish but informative article about polio in Cork, Ireland in 1956.

" .....The fear was all the greater because polio did not behave like other diseases. Unlike typhus or cholera, it mainly hit the middle classes rather than the poor. In Cork most of the victims were in the relatively prosperous southern suburbs and not the terrible slums in the north of the city. At the height of the epidemic Dr Gerard McCarthy, the medical officer for Cork county, pointed this out, saying: “The higher the standard of living, the greater the tendency towards the disease. Generally the well- washed and well-laundered children are the more susceptible.” Maureen O’Sullivan, a Red Cross nurse, noticed that “80 per cent of the victims came from affluent or semi-affluent families."

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-.../polio-the-deadly-summer-of-1956-2117253.html
 
debodun said:
Maybe diseases are becoming more virulent because we clean our environments too much. We have no immunity to germs. In the 1800, polio affected the more well-off people because they had better hygiene and could afford cleaning products and took more trouble to clean. The poorer people had less sickness because they were exposed to more dirt and germs and thereby had stronger immunity.
Click to expand...

Germs and viruses are two separate things. Doesn't matter how long ago or not, how clean or dirty your environment,if a new virus appears like Cv-19 we have no immunity and it will spread like wildfire.
 
I don't know if it is hygiene, I do know that most people that live in the big cities are not as healthy as the more rural people. I know since I moved up this way I don't get as ill as I used to. I eat properly , most of the time through most weather even in the cold. Freezing rain though stops me cold, too dangerous.
That is my feeling on it. :) :)
 
I do not know about those in the US, in my area almost no one smokes, stores here are not even allowed to display cigarettes.
I have neighbors in their 70s still out and about active etc. After 30 years here and knowing these people I will agree to disagree based on different locals.
 
This is where my mother would say "so we should all be kind to each other."
 

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