Surviving the germ invasion
Accounting majors, pre-med students, future teachers, and Thunder Radio disk jockeys, it’s time to run to Wal-Mart and buy some Lysol.
According to an article on WebMD.com, the University of Arizona did a study on which professions are exposed to the most germs.
The results are in. Your professions (or future professions) all made it into the top five.
The report went on to explain that the office objects containing the most bacteria are computer mice, keyboards, desks and phones.
It gave some tips on how to avoid contact with germs, such as wiping the surfaces down with a disinfecting wipe and not eating lunch at an office desk.
I am seriously terrified now. My work here at The Spectrum entails sitting at a bacteria-ridden desk, typing on a bacteria-ridden computer keyboard and occasionally answering a bacteria-ridden phone.
I am also a Thunder Radio DJ. That means I speak into a microphone and run a control board, both of which are probably their own self-governing bacteria nation by now.
According to the article, this job ranks higher than a doctor in the number of germs I am exposed to.
I am more at risk sitting in a control room listening to Symphony X than I would be caring for patients with deadly diseases. I am incredulous. And here I thought the worst thing I had to deal with was the occasional late night drunken request for “Freebird.”
I am now officially in a state of panic. Whatever am I going to do? I suppose I should call in sick in advance because I ate lunch at my desk yesterday. I didn’t wash my hands first, and I certainly didn’t wipe down my desk before I ate.
I’ll need a bottle of Advil, a few boxes of Kleenex and a few bowls of chicken soup tonight because of that. I just never know when all those germs are finally going to gang up on me. Maybe I should request hazard pay.
In all seriousness, while I respect germs as the microscopic disease-causing entities that they are, I believe we as a society have given them far too much power to frighten us.
Thousands of people nationwide work as teachers, accountants, bankers, radio DJs and doctors. Seeing as I am not noticing a massive number of headlines about an extreme unemployment crisis, I can safely assume these people make it to work often enough to not be fired.
I highly doubt the majority of them wipe their desks before they eat lunch.
I have been a DJ on and off throughout college. I don’t get sick any more often than my non-DJ friends. Why should finding out that it came out as the fourth germiest profession in some study change that?
Also, if our bodies are really so fragile that the germs we face in everyday life would overwhelm them upon contact, how on earth did the human race survive the thousands of years before Lysol was invented?
Our ancestors drank water out of streams that fish had died in and they didn’t even boil it first. They may have gotten sick at times just like we do today, but if the human race is still alive and thriving, they had to have been well often enough to gather food and produce and raise offspring.
We could safely cease our germ paranoia and survive another couple thousand generations, provided we don’t wipe ourselves out with nuclear war. But that’s a different story.
Columnists' opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of The Spectrum