Is worry caused by a virus?

I read in a tabloid newspaper the other day that the end of the world is near, but I don’t think it will be due to any exterior force, such as war or a giant meteor. I think God is going to get rid of us from the inside out. We’ll go, as T.S. Eliot suggested, “not with a bang but a whimper.”

One is forced into this kind of thinking because of the deadly new diseases emerging in recent times, transmitted from cows, chickens, pigs, monkeys, crows and other angry life forms out to do us in. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about.

While you go whistling on your merry way, I am inclined to fret over the maladies billowing with amazing regularity from some exotic clime.

The news is turning me into a hypochondriac. I was in Oakland last weekend and came down with a cough and sore throat, and immediately associated the symptoms with the chicken virus.

I spent three days worrying. It’s what I do best. When I was in high school, our gym teacher insisted that we dry between our toes after showering to prevent athlete’s foot. He warned us that a fungus in those spaces could spread to our head and leave us permanently brain damaged. Beware, he warned, of an itching between the toes.

I have since learned that this is probably not true, but to be on the safe side, I never leave moisture from a shower between my toes. And I’m extraordinarily conscious of itchy feet.

Fortunately, that cough and sore throat were an Oakland virus, not a chicken virus. However, any Oakland pathology is potentially serious. The symptoms of an Oakland flu are dry mouth, nausea, a sudden drop in IQ and an overwhelming need for a shot of Jack Daniel’s with a water chaser.

I’m convinced that the viruses and bacteria of the world are teaming up for a big push somewhere down the line that will be worse than the plague, the Spanish flu, sweaty palms or even genital herpes, which, for a short time, was a major concern among those who practiced sex as if it were a high school sport.

New ailments come whizzing by us like bats out of caves (bats, incidentally, also have to be avoided because they could be rabid). Wasn’t it just yesterday, for instance, that we were avoiding steaks and burgers because of an outbreak of mad cow disease? A fear of suddenly falling down and mooing crazily had us switching to fish and chicken, but I’m not sure they’re any safer than cows, despite assurances to the contrary.

A lethal avian virus has affected millions of chickens in Southeast Asia, and a new report warns that farm-raised salmon are loaded with environmental toxics, such as the cancer-causing PCB. The next time you order it in a restaurant, you might ask the waiter if it was farm-raised or wild. He will surely know.

My wife, the sensible Cinelli, says I worry too much about diseases that could bring me down like a rabid dog. “If 40 years of martinis haven’t killed you,” she says, “I doubt that chicken cacciatore will.”

Even though we have been plagued by SARS, mad cow disease, E. coli and the West Nile and Ebola viruses, the malady that worries me most is the flesh-eating disease that periodically pops up to devour someone’s brain or his entire body from the toes up. It’s a bacteria called “invasive Group A streptococcus.”

I have a description of one case from a book called “The New Killer Diseases: How the Alarming Evolution of Mutant Germs Threatens Us All”: “This ravenous bacteria had turned Jeannie’s kidneys into a mass of jelly ... her heart into a squishy sponge ... “

The book describes Jeannie as a single mom from North Carolina who, before her kidneys turned into jelly, complained of a painful shoulder, vomiting, fever and a rash. I’ve had those same symptoms many times, which are usually dismissed by my doctor as allergies. He prescribes Allegra. I doubt Allegra would cure the flesh-eating disease, but I haven’t gotten it up to now, so maybe he’s right.

Lately, I’ve become conscious of restless leg syndrome. A radio commercial warns that RLS, as it is known to the medically hip, if not treated, can cause irritation, depression and sleep deprivation. I think I have it. I jiggle my leg when I write, and sometimes at night my leg feels funny and I have to shake it to quell a kind of tingle.

Cinelli is a light sleeper and bolts awake. “What in God’s name are you doing?” she asks. I didn’t have an adequate explanation at one time. But since hearing of the restless leg syndrome, I explain that I can’t help it, I have RLS. She sighs, and warns that it could be the first indication of something far more serious, like sleeping alone.

So I end my day not with a bang but a whimper, and try to ignore my itchy toes.

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Al’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com