WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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I am back in the UK and I have a cold.

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I've lost my voice, I sound a little bit like Tom Waits.

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So, it is the 21st century:

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Why can I not just take a pill and cure this thing?

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Well, first of all the pills we do have are antibiotics

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and they don't work against colds.

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You'll have seen this poster in your doctor's office.

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You need a vaccination.

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And well, it's difficult to find a vaccination for the common cold,

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for the same reason that once you've have one cold

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your body is not automatically immune against all others.

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There are hundreds of the buggers

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and they keep mutating.

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It's the same reason why you have to have a flu shot every year.

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Actually that's worse than that,

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the World Health Organization has to predict,

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months in advance,

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which flu strains will be 'popular'

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this winter.

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And then ramp up vaccine production accordingly.

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And they've got natural selection against them too:

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If they release that vaccine too early,

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then the viruses that are able to
rapidly mutate against it

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will be successful and will spread instead.

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The common cold works in a similar way:

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There are hundreds of strains constantly mutating.

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And because it doesn't generally kill people, just causes some discomfort,

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there isn't the millions and millions and millions in research funds

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going towards getting rid of it.

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So instead we take pain killers,

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and anti-inflammatories

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and decongestants,

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and we accept that we can win this battle

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on our own.

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Even though we cannot win the war.

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Because the enemy will go away,

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mutate,

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and just come back a few months later.

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And that is something you may not have known.

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And now I am going to stop talking.

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Closed captions by MM.
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