What Pathogens Prefer

I mentioned yesterday that I took an online quiz about bloodborne pathogens. I studied for it as well, since it's not a subject that I knew anything about. Then I took the quiz and got 100% right.

One of the questions was kind of weird though. I can't remember exactly what the wording was, but it had to do with whether bloodborne pathogens "prefer" being in a host or not being in a host. I was thinking that's a little weird. But it makes a certain amount of sense, assuming bacteria, spores, viruses are going about their business of life intentionally. The answer was True.

It'd be great to fit a little camera into a bacteria and look around from its point of view. Or attach some brain sensors to its consciousness to determine what its level of conscious activity is in relation to various stimuli or circumstances. I don't usually think of them as thinking over their moves and activities. It might be just like a field of consciousness, kind of the way we think of birds when they make their moves (I read about that somewhere once).

The bacteria I have in the basement, in those spots where the water leaks in in the spring and get all over my stuff -- then develop little colonies that infest and destroy, say, a book ... they're mostly working in the dark, because I don't usually have the lights on unless I'm down there. What would they be doing? Bumping into one another on their way across the room? I don't know how they get from place to place, unless they catch a current of air, or keep multiplying across the room until they get there.

It's sickening though. I've been down there, cleaning, doing my spring cleaning. And it's like a spore factory. I hate it. There was some bills that had fallen into the wet muck. And I needed to shred some of them, which is tough going in a shredder if the stuff is damp. Now they'd be in my shredder, and who knows where from there! And I'm afraid that I'm going to get them in my nasal passages, in my eyes, in my ears, in a little cut, etc., and die.

If I die from bacteria all over my stuff, people will say, Right there it proves that living simply is the best way. This guy died from his possessions.

Hearing about and thinking about bacteria about drives me crazy. Because once I get it in my mind, it stays there.

UPDATE: I just thought of the worst thing the bacteria destroyed recently, within the last year. I had a rare Ray Charles jukebox set, five or six records in a jukebox envelope, nice condition, the records virtually mint condition. It was in a box of 45s, although I believe these records played at 33 (they were still 7 inchers). This set was on the end in the box, the end was near the wall. I went to get a record out of the box and noticed mold and gunk on the outside of the jukebox envelope. Oh no! The bacteria had eaten or multiplied their way inside and destroyed one label of the first record. Which ruins the set of course. That was heartbreaking.