Temperature Sensitive

There has been a statistically significant span of "hot" (in comparison to British controls) weather in the UK for the past 2 weeks.

At first this rare occurrence is welcomed with national glee but after a week the media decides it has to be a sign of the apocalypse and issues weather warnings. The British also discover they have no small-talk when the weather is consistently good and so have to find things to complain about.

It makes me wonder whether there is a temperature sensitive mutation that occurs to denizens of the UK where after temperatures exceed 27 degrees we can no longer function? This would make sense if the UK was an isolated nation with a narrow gene pool but we aren't. This leads me to think there may be some kind of retrovirus that only exists in the UK. Upon infection it rewrites our DNA to be useless in warm conditions. This must be a virus that can only survive outside the host at temperatures below 27 degrees. I guess it makes sense that it would program the host to seek out mundane temperatures so that the virus can propagate.
The virus may have other personality-altering functions such as encouraging heavy drinking (a feature that is probably always being expressed). This could suggest the virus spreads via beer glasses or badly maintained urinals. It would also help explain it's prevalence in the UK and not other parts of the world.

I've never heard of a case of a virus being able to infect metals but I am starting to wonder whether this may be the case. Afterall, I can't understand why railway tracks become "unstable" in the UK at temperatures above 27 degrees. If this was true of all steel then surely huge parts of the world would be back to horse and cart or cars throughout their summers?

So I think this would make an excellent grant proposal to try and isolate this amazing virus. Not only could it help us under stand host behaviour modification but it could also be a breakthrough in materials science. It may be years away but imagine how nice it would be during the next heatwave (probably sometime in 2025) for the British government to provide an immunisation program against this virus (assuming it doesn't change us on a DNA level). Maybe then it would be possible for us all to enjoy the weather?

Of course we could just avoid the news while the weather is nice.