Does the Virus Dislike Children?
By David Aitken  I chased after the circus caravans as they trundled out of Dundee but perhaps fortunately never caught up with them. I wouldnt have been a very good tightrope walker or trapeze artist, owing to my fear of heights, and would have felt uneasy putting my head into a lions mouth on account of my fear of enclosed spaces. Although my wife reckons I would have made a good clown.  more sense probably). This has probably as much to do with the rarity of circuses as it has with Covid restrictions. And anyway, many of them will already have a PlayStation or virtual reality headset (what we used to call a brain) with onscreen violence that would out-Herod any lion. One of the great puzzles of our present predicament  vanishing circuses aside  is the fact that children are less affected  or infected  than adults, and various explanations for this have been offered. Apparently, young cells are relatively naive, and being untrained by time, they blast away at any new virus on a broad front, unlike us oldies whose immune systems dont react much to novelty any more. Tell me about it. (They dont seem like such little innocents now, do they?) And when exposed to viruses, they receive smaller doses because of their smaller noses! Biology is rarely straightforward, said one medical expert, presumably the man had a Ph.D. in the blindingly obvious. Experience is one thing you cant get for nothing, according to Oscar Wilde, but having inexperienced T cells seems to have stood young people in good stead during the pandemic. You have to wonder, however, why it is this same blanket immunity does not extend to other childish ailments, such as measles or bronchitis or asthma or influenza. Several solutions suggest themselves. By which I mean that it finds them too much of a bother, too great a challenge, too demanding of its time and effort  the same reasons some schoolteachers resign. After all, no less a philosopher than Homer Simpson reminds us that kids aint nothing but trouble.  Covid-19 is, after all, relatively new to the world itself and most of its time so far has been taken up with scything its way through the adult population without taking on the extra burden represented by the small-nosed ones. Perhaps it hopes to get round to them later with a new junior strain, perish the thought. And perish the strain. All of which ruminations cast a new light on the fact that Corky, the original Circus Boy (Micky Dolenz, who was later the drummer in The Monkees) was only 11 years old when he joined the circus. It is, after all, a safe vocation for children, with their young immune systems (and small noses.) To my lasting regret, I have had to accept that I am now too old to join a circus.