# spreading colds: good or bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [March 10, 2008, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spreading-colds-good-or-bad/440821 "2008-03-10T09:17:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![spayced](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@spayced](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spayced)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spreading-colds-good-or-bad/440821/1 "2008-03-10T09:17:24Z")
I’m commenting on something I disagree with in the article at [http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcold.html](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcold.html) The article suggests ways to prevent colds from spreading, and those strategies are sound. However, I hold the view that one should not try to prevent the spread of flu viruses. In fact, regarding sicknesses that tend to just annoy, it is best to spread them so that others may hone their bodily defenses. Your body has cells that are specially engineered to combat previously experienced threats, and giving them work is important for adaptation. In Cecil’s article, “Why did so many Native Americans die of European diseases but not vice versa?” the theory I hold is touched upon, > [@](#): > > Europe had been a crossroads for war and commerce for millennia and so had encountered an extraordinary number of pestilences, while the Americas were isolated and had not. Europeans had also spent a long time around domestic animals, which were the source of many of the most virulent diseases to afflict humans in the Old World. In contrast, native Americans had few domestic animals. As a consequence Europeans had developed some resistance to disease but native Americans hadn’t. In fact exposure to disease, in the long run, improves our chances of surviving those diseases. We have to play ball with them anyway, right? I personally do not ever take sick days from work, school, or leisure unless the disease itself actually prevents me from doing so. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spreading-colds-good-or-bad/440821/2 "2008-03-10T18:47:33Z")
Typhoid Mary, is that you? 🙂 While it might be helpful to spread “annoyance” germs around so that people with normally functioning immune systems can take a whiff of the germs, so to speak, and build immunities, your plan would needlessly endanger people with compromised immune systems, such as those on chemotherapy for cancer, or that are HIV positive. OTOH, there’s been a grassroots movement for a few decades to hold “measles parties” or “pox parties” for kids. It seems odd, but they’re especially popular in Germany, where there’s a cultural distrust of immunizations. How it works is when one kid in the neighborhood picks up something like measles, chicken pox or mumps, you round up all of the neighborhood kids and keep them in close contact so they all get the disease at an early age. Sound horrible at first glance until you realize how dangerous and devastating some “childhood” diseases can be to adults. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spreading-colds-good-or-bad/440821/3 "2008-03-10T18:53:14Z")
There’s a difference between the cold and the flu. I recently read that vaccinating the young against the flu actually decreases the elderly mortality rate, as it helps prevent the disease spreading so widely. [Here’s a link to a journal article that comes to this conclusion.](http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/344/12/889) From the article (which compared flu vaccinations in the US and Japan): > [@](#): > > The vaccination of Japanese children prevented about 37,000 to 49,000 deaths per year, or about 1 death for every 420 children vaccinated. So spreading germs is not necessarily a good thing. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spreading-colds-good-or-bad/440821/4 "2008-03-11T16:03:10Z")
There’s two ways people gain disease resistance. _An individual_ may improve his or her immune system in respose to a mild or weaker infection, and be better protected thereafter. (A full-scale infection would also improve resistance for the future, but it’s not advantageous in the short term, as you’ll actually have the disease, so the question of whether or not you get benefit only applies to potential future reinfection, not this time). Historically more important to the question of European resistance, _a population_ may gain resistance by natural selection – its less resistant individuals die off, and the survivors propagate. Since they’ve never been exposed, young children suffer this winnowing process most dramatically. In and of itself, this selection process does nothing at all for either the surviviors or the dead – the dead are dead, of course, but the survivors in this case are resistant purely as a matter of their random genetic mutation. They were _already_ resistant when the disease hit, or they’d be dead now. This selection process did nothing to strengthen their systems. The statistical resistance of the survivng population is better, but individuals are no better off _as a result of this second form of resistance_ except for any immune system response they might have (the entirely separate effect discussed in the previous paragraph). So spreading pathogens will indeed make the overall population statistically more resistant. A good thing. The cost, inevitably, is a higher proportion of death and misery among the littlest children. That may not be what you want to accomplish. Of course, I haven’t discussed the [Hygiene\_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis), which may have some bearing on your point. Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spreading-colds-good-or-bad/440821/5 "2008-03-11T17:54:34Z")
[QUOTE=Sailboat] Of course, I haven’t discussed the [Hygiene\_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis), which may have some bearing on your point. Sailboat [/QUOTE] I love this quote from that wiki article: > [@](#): > > The role of the T regulatory cells of the immune system is similar to that of the bouncer, keeping the beer party in check.