So, kids who are miserably sick, belonging home in bed, are sent to school, where they proceed to fill the air (a classroom is NOT a Class 100 Clean Room!) with whatever disease they have, which then proceeds to spread like wildfire.
Our culture is configured as a perfect mechanism for exponential propagation of communicable diseases. Works like a charm. Don't take my word for it, ask me! I just spent two weeks sick like a dog. The fifty dollar a pill (or something in that range) antibiotic didn't work, but, the Sulfa did (doctor switched me after the first half of a double-regimen of the "expensive spread" didn't make a dent in it). Go figure.
Viral, bacterial, it doesn't matter. It will eventually beat you down until you are a walking petri dish. (Unless treated, "viral infections" will often batter me to the point that I end up with a life-threatening case of bacterial bronchitis, which is why I take antibiotics "even though they don't work for a virus.")
We have all been living on borrowed time for quite a while. It can't go on forever.
Yup. At Thanksgiving each of my family members were asked to cite one thing they were thankful for. Mine was: "of the six billion people that have come before me, I was lucky enough to have been born in the best time and place that humans have ever lived."
I agree, it won't last forever.
"Parents, for the most part mind-numbed gratification-seeking machines..."
You're a wordsmith.