Holidays , Doctors and Diseases

Well , the Chinese New Year is already over . Have you all had a good time during the holidays ? It was a great time for me as I managed to go back to Malaysia to visit my family . I had not seen them for a long time , so I was overjoyed to be able to meet them again .

This year , the Chinese New Year was different from others that I had experienced , as it fell on a weekend and on the same day as Valentine's Day . It was also my first Chinese New Year in Singapore . But it was also different for another reason : I was sick .

When I got back to Malaysia , my throat felt slightly ticklish and I felt a bit hot . But when I reached home again , I was so tired that I fell asleep almost immediately , and did not worry about it .

The next morning , I woke up and felt hot and itchy all over . I tried to resist the itch but it got worse and worse . So I told my mother and she brought me to see a doctor . The doctor said that I had a fever , an inflamed throat and heat rash . He gave me some pills and a few tubs of cream for the rash . After that , my mother brought me home .

I was lucky that the viruses that had infected me were only mild diseases , and therefore did not cause much harm . The human body is extremely adaptable , so after a specific type of germ has been defeated , the immune system is easily able to fight it if it comes again . This is called being immune to a disease .

Whenever we get a vaccination , we will develop a mild disease , but we either get better or we catch the full illness and might die of it . This is because a vaccine is actually a mild dose of the virus which is weakened , and is not as harmful to us as the actual virus . The immune system learns to fight the disease , so that if the virus attacks again , we will not catch the sickness .

But if the virus is a new species , we will not have a vaccine for it . This means that only a small percentage of the people who catch the disease will live to tell the tale . If the disease is extremely contagious , it can easily be spread to other parts of the globe , and many people will catch it and die .

This is called an epidemic . For example , the A(H1N1) pandemic (which is an epidemic that has spread very far) last year killed over 10,000 people worldwide . If a new species of virus managed to infect a large number of people , and the human immune system was unable to fight the disease , millions could die of it .

The disease smallpox no longer troubles us , as humans have prevented the spread of it naturally and only keep a few laboratory samples . But if the samples got loose one day , the disease which has killed millions could kill more , perhaps even every last human on Earth.

Viruses are another possible theory of the end of humanity which is not to be taken lightly , as the ever present factor of evolution could mean that a virus mutates every year into a more deadly version of itself . Is it possible for viruses to wipe out the human race ? I don't know about you , but I sure think so!