Take two aspirins and hope for the best

There was a bit of good news recently regarding the weather and influenza. After days of winter flooding and other less positive weather news, it was good to learn that there are fewer flu cases this year.

Everyone grew up with his or her own family truisms regarding the weather and medicine. For example: If it snows in October, the number of snowfalls for the entire winter will be determined by the date of the October snowfall. So, if it snows Oct. 12, there will be 12 snowfalls during the winter. That must be what happened last winter on the East Coast, where it snowed and snowed and snowed. The first snowfall must have been in late October.

And how many home remedies do you rely on? When I was growing up home remedies were far more common than visits to the doctor. You didn't go to the doctor unless (a) things were broken or (b) it looked like you might die in spite of home remedies.

Home remedies ranged from a wad of chewing tobacco to soothe wasp stings to vinegar baths for sunburn. The fact was that most everyone would recover from such maladies anyway, but recovering after the use of a well-known home remedy only reinforced the effectiveness of the remedy.

I don't remember that flu was so prevalent when I was growing up. People had colds. Period. Mild colds. Fierce colds. Horrible colds. But not the flu. We probably had the flu and just thought we were going to die from a bad cold.

Another explanation could have been asphidity (or acifidity) bags. Do you remember those?

Asphidity bags were small cloth pouches filled with certain ingredients that were supposed to ward off certain illnesses. I'm not sure what, exactly, went into an asphidity bag, but these bags were probably best known for their terrible odor.

The bags were worn on a string around your neck. The pouch could be concealed under your clothing, but the odor could not be hidden. This is perhaps why asphidity bags seemed to work. You couldn't stand to be near anyone with an asphidity bag, thus lowering the potential for contact with germs.

A lot of us believe a hard winter kills germs. Therefore, we think extremely low temperatures will lessen the likelihood of illness in the spring. Some of us believe allergies are reduced by freezing temperatures. I don't know if there is any scientific support for such claims, but we always blame mild winters for the outbreak of spring allergies anyway.

In addition to confirmed flu cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also monitor "flu-like illnesses." Flu-like illnesses are just as miserable as actual flu but are not caused by a flu virus. So it is interesting to note that some parts of the country are actually reporting an increase in flu-like illnesses while experiencing a decrease, from last year, in confirmed flu cases.

I'd like to think that the guessing game that results in each year's flu vaccine paid off this time. There are several flu viruses floating around each year, and no vaccine can be concocted that is guaranteed to protect against all of them. Sometimes a virus that isn't targeted by the vaccine is the one that turns into an epidemic. This year's vaccine may have caught the right viruses at the right time.

Or there could be a thousand other explanations. Don't expect me to have all the answers when doctors -- folks with medical degrees -- don't have a clue why there are fewer flu cases this year.

Few doctors, by the way, think home remedies are all that great. If you ever go to a doctor who is wearing an asphidity bag, you've got a winner. Why? Because this clearly is a doctor who understands that science can be trumped by the effect of self-administered remedies that work, maybe because of their psychological effect.

Common sense has a lot to do with your general health. Avoiding people who sneeze all the time is probably a good thing to do. There's no way to over-emphasize the importance of washing your hands. Eating decent food -- including chicken noodle soup -- can make you feel better even if it doesn't prevent an illness.

There are only a couple of weeks left before some early-voting Americans start the process of selecting candidates for U.S. president. This year, that process starts even earlier than the arrival of spring's buds. Just remember: Whatever we decide about presidential candidates could stick with us for four more years. Thank goodness, a common cold only lasts a few days.

Wearing an asphidity bag to the polls probably won't help.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Misourian.