I am back in the UK and I have a cold.
I've lost my voice, I sound a little bit like Tom Waits.
So, it is the 21st century:
Why can I not just take a pill and cure this thing?
Well, first of all the pills we do have are antibiotics
and they don't work against colds.
You'll have seen this poster in your doctor's office.
You need a vaccination.
And well, it's difficult to find a vaccination for the common cold,
for the same reason that once you've have one cold
your body is not automatically immune against all others.
There are hundreds of the buggers
and they keep mutating.
It's the same reason why you have to have a flu shot every year.
Actually that's worse than that,
the World Health Organization has to predict,
months in advance,
which flu strains will be 'popular'
this winter.
And then ramp up vaccine production accordingly.
And they've got natural selection against them too:
If they release that vaccine too early,
then the viruses that are able to rapidly mutate against it
will be successful and will spread instead.
The common cold works in a similar way:
There are hundreds of strains constantly mutating.
And because it doesn't generally kill people, just causes some discomfort,
there isn't the millions and millions and millions in research funds
going towards getting rid of it.
So instead we take pain killers,
and anti-inflammatories
and decongestants,
and we accept that we can win this battle
on our own.
Even though we cannot win the war.
Because the enemy will go away,
mutate,
and just come back a few months later.
And that is something you may not have known.
And now I am going to stop talking.
Closed captions by MM. [Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!]