Solipsist's Switcheroo

 Hi Loyal Readers of Solipsist's Soiree and hope you both are well,

Soso is moving to a more dependable (paying) gig at the Genetic Literacy Project (GLP), providing its formidable editing skills to that website, with additional possibilities of podcast creation in which case you will be treated to raspy Brooklyneese and snide commentary. If time remains, these unreliable posts will continue at blogspot, so keep tuned to this channel and please subscribe to GLP.  GLP, creation of Jon Entine, has an interesting slant on things, positioning itself to support science and inquiry against both left-wing and right-wing criticism.

Meantimes....

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/opinion/covid-germs-health.html

This is a link to a commentary from the Sunday Review section of the NYT and a worthy and relevant topic at this time noting the ascendancy to the Pantheon of hand sanitizers, Lysol fights for the remaining wipes at ShopRite and hoarding of cleaning supplies. Fomites is a fancy name for surfaces and research has shown that Covid-19 is unlikely to be transmitted by surfaces but that is not stopping people from clinging to pseudo-science and propagating false information. How will we feel safe every again? According to the commentary, "Some health experts are watching this ongoing onslaught with a mounting sense of dread. They fear that many of the measures we've employed to stop the virus, even some that are helpful and necessary, may pose a threat to human health in the long run if they continue." What they are referring to is our microbiota, the microbes that constitute our normal flora, which are probably more susceptible to this cleaning frenzy, than many viruses are.

B. Brett Finlay, author of the PNAS paper cited in the commentary calls getting rid of the good microbes (baby bacteria with bathwater) "collateral damage" and laments the major consequences to our health and immune systems if we do not start to live with germs again. This microbiome research is fairly recent and warrants keeping up with. There has been research indicating that children who grow up on farms and play in dirt have immune systems more resistant to challenges than those that play in sanitized environments. Auto-immune diseases are also being reevaluated in this context. The commentary concludes that the body is an ecosystem, "home to a vast and symbiotic ecosystem of organisms", which, when disrupted, suffers consequences. Reference is also made to the overuse of antibiotics in the pandemic, which they also attribute to "hygiene zealotry".