Apparently the common cold is here to stay. It’s firmly established and not to be sneezed at. The fiscal integrity of too many industries depends on it. They will survive and thrive because many common cold sufferers feel certain that somewhere out there is a new miraculous cure .
It is inconceivable that the Black Plague, smallpox, polio, diptheria and even dandruff are all under control while rhinovirus, the common cold in the nose, runs on.
When we get a cold, we take something. That’s the American way. When someone senses any affliction, one takes something. It will at least stimulate the economy. According to one estimate, Americans cough up between 25 and 40 billion dollars a year to beat the unbeatable cold.
If an actual cure is found, some pharmaceutical firms will suffer. The television industry’s commercials schedule will have huge gaps to fill and the bottom might fall out of the chicken soup market.
The cold often strikes like a thief in the night, creeping through the sleeping victim’s innards. He’d turned in eight hours ago, the picture of health. Now, as the sun rises, so does his temperature and apparently someone has poured Draino down his throat.
“I thig I hab a code,” he groans to his wife. She’d already diagnosed that listening to his hacking cough and feeling his overheated brow. “Am I pale?” he asks. “I feel kinda pale.”
“You have some color,” she soothes and doesn’t mention that it’s green.
But there is no panic. Every family has a set plan to defeat the cold, to cure the incurable. Some rush the victim to the doctor’s office where he might spend an unmasked hour coughing and clouding the waiting room with one or more of the 200 varieties of cold viruses.
Others will use time-honored home remedies like hot soup, inhaled vapors and strong-smelling gooey stuff applied to the victim’s chest and that little space between the nose and upper lip. Alcohol concoctions are preferred by others. They do nothing to defeat the cold but they can induce a feeling of euphoria where the patient manages to forget the cold. Eventually the cold returns riding on a hangover.
Some patent medicine ads imply our cold symptoms can be completely masked by their pills and we can get back to business as usual, feeling fully recovered, and actually, fully contagious.
Imagine That 