It's a risky old world we live in, and recent news is that it has got a bit riskier - research has shown that germs can be carried a long way by a sneeze, and the germs lurking in the wild are becoming more potent - Sars has evolved into a more deadly "Middle East" version, due to be spread worldwide when the Muslims return from this year's pilgrimage to Mecca.
The highly contagious Ebola virus has become even more deadly. "Super bugs" are growing and evolving in our hospitals, with MRSA or its progressions impossible to control in some places - with some patients doomed to carry it for life.
Until the past few years, medicine has been able to control most of these infections with various antibiotics, but to a greater or lesser extent the antibiotics made by the drug companies are becoming ineffective against newly evolving bacteria - people are getting sick and either staying sick or dying when they would have been cured a few years ago. The World Health Organisation is worried, saying in effect that we have found ourselves up a raging river of excrement with no paddles.
I am hardly a doctor, and what I know about medicine could be written on the back of an aspirin packet with a spray can, but I am concerned that we all need to get with the programme. We all know that the best way to get over a bug is not to catch it in the first place. Stay away from people with diseases - or, if you are ill, stay home. If you must cough in company, cough into a handkerchief or the inside of your elbow.
One of the reasons that antibiotics are becoming less effective is that they are being used unwisely - you must continue to take them after you feel better - just as your doctor prescribed them. Otherwise the bacteria remaining in your system will gain a resistance to that antibiotic, so that when it returns it will be stronger and much more resistant to that drug.