Flu Season

[Gryffindorian]

Link

This year is said to be a very bad flu season in the U.S., with many reported deaths.

Three of my relatives whom I live with have all gotten sick within the past week. Another sister of mine and her family also got very sick. I got some kind of bug on Friday, the 18th, that started with severe coughing, headache, muscle aches, and fatigue. I had fever and chills that evening and have been taking cough syrup and other medicine ever since. I don't know if this is the flu, but I surely feel miserable. I got a flu shot back in December.

Anyone else got sick this year? Has anyone been impacted in any way? What say you?

 

[Anji]

The flu is not that bad in the Chicago area. I'm the only person I know of that is struggling with something. At first it was just some post-nasal drip down the back of my throat and now I'm blowing nose.

I hit this thing with 1,000 milligrams of Vitamin C every day and two days of Robitussin. I think it's going to pass without making me really, really sick.

Up your Vitamin C and A to help your immune system beat whatever it is you have. Use hand sanitizer religiously. A couple of days of Tylenol won't hurt you either.

I really think they're blowing this flu thing out of proportion. There's always some virus that is going around.

If there is an epidemic it's because:

1. People are going to work sick because they're afraid or they can't afford to take the day off.
2. We eating all this processed food products because real food (grown in the earith) is too expensive for us to afford.
3. Almost nobody has health insurance so they can get the proper medical treatment.

And with that, I say, God Bless America!

 

[thestrangequark]

I got the flu shot. As did everyone at my work. But we all got a sinus infection instead.

 

[RoJoHen]

Never had a flu shot. Probably never will.

In my experience the people who get flu shots are the ones that get sick. Everybody and their mother was sick with some nasty achy, pukey, diarrheaey something last month, but I managed to power through.

I had my tonsils removed back in 2003, and since then I have only gotten sick twice.

 

[thestrangequark]

Never had a flu shot. Probably never will.

In my experience the people who get flu shots are the ones that get sick. Everybody and their mother was sick with some nasty achy, pukey, diarrheaey something last month, but I managed to power through.

I had my tonsils removed back in 2003, and since then I have only gotten sick twice.

Have you considered the fact that people who get the flu shot are more likely to be people who are immune-compromised -- older people, children, and people with chronic illnesses? Did you consider that this indeed makes them more likely to contract any disease, not only flu? And that we tend to use the term "flu" broadly here, to describe any bad cold or even stomach bug? So, perhaps, you know, the whole correlation does not equal causation thing -- people who get flu shot get sick: people get sick because they are more prone to get sick, and people get flu shot because they are more prone to get sick.

Not everyone needs the flu shot, but frankly, I find people's endless anecdotal evidence (read, not at all evidence -- anecdotal evidence is worse than useless) about how so-and-so always gets the shot and always gets sick, and I never get shots and I never get sick, exhausting. It feeds into the dangerous and stupid mindset of the antivaxer. And while flu shots aren't as vital as say, whooping cough, mumps, or tetanus vaccines (nor indeed, are they as effective), they still save a lot of lives. I suspect many of the people who died of flu this year never got flu before either.

 

[RoJoHen]

I think you are greatly overreacting to my statement, considering I'm mostly just talking about my random, generally-healthy 20-something friends who get the flu shot and then immediately get sick the very next day.

I have nothing against vaccinations. I just don't need 'em, not for the flu anyway.

So stop yelling at me!

 

[Mr Awe]

^^ Flu shots can't make you sick. The virus is dead in them. They do reduce the influenza cases but they are far from perfect. If you're healthy, you're not too likely to get the flu anyway.

For a nice article about this issue:

How effective are flu shots?

Mr Awe

 

[thestrangequark]

I think you are greatly overreacting to my statement, considering I'm mostly just talking about my random, generally-healthy 20-something friends who get the flu shot and then immediately get sick the very next day.

I have nothing against vaccinations. I just don't need 'em, not for the flu anyway.

So stop yelling at me!

Not yelling! You know I love you! But you're confusing correlation with causation, and, as I said, this thinking is wrong! You may not be antivax, but antivaxers hear stuff like that and it feeds their appalling stupidity!

 

[Gryffindorian]

tsq, I constantly hear the "myth" from many, many people about the flu shot making them sick. For this very reason, my older sister got sick last week because she refused to get a flu shot. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she was the one who made everyone else in my family ill.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Wasn't the issue last year that the flu shots were mostly for one strain and a different strain altogether made the rounds?

I've never had the shot, and never will. I last had the flu (at least a major bout with it) about 10 years ago.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Not sure, but there's always a new strain of the flu virus every season, thus the need for certain people to be vaccinated. I would think the Swine Flu H1N1 was the biggest epidemic in years.

 

[PsychoPere]

[...] I'm mostly just talking about my random, generally-healthy 20-something friends who get the flu shot and then immediately get sick the very next day.

That's called "coincidence." They were already exposed prior to getting the shot. It takes about two to three weeks for the vaccination to take effect.

 

[Davros]

I must have grown up watching too many Warner Brothers cartoons growing up because, the first response in my mind on seeing this thread title was "rabbit season"

 

[Peach Wookiee]

I got hit with a touch of the flu in December. First time in probably a decade I had a decent fever (102 F before it was through), but I felt like crap. So I got my flu shot this week at my local pharmacy. My mom can't have the shot, but flu could be fatal for her, so my dad and I both got shots.

 

[TorontoTrekker]

I don't know if what I have is the flu, but last Tuesday morning I woke up, got out of bed, and promptly fell over. So I called in sick - this is the first time, except for one bout of food poisoning, that I've taken a day off sick in over 15 years.

The week went somethng like this:

Tuesday
9:06AM: called in sick. Didn't actually get out of bed all day.
2:15PM: my manager called to ask when I thought I'd be coming back in.

Wednesday:
8:56AM: called in sick. Got out of bed maybe three or four times, for less than an hour in total.
2:40PM: my manager called to ask when I thought I'd be coming back in.

Thursday: woke up, felt a little better, decided to try to go to work. Got halfway there before I decided this was a really bad idea, got off the bus, and went across the street to catch the bus going back the other way.
9:36AM: called in sick. Spent the next 8 hours or so in bed.
12:49PM: missed a call from my manager, because I was asleep.
2:28PM: my manager called to ask when I thought I'd be coming back in, and to tell me that he had a phone meeting coming up at 3 with the client, and to ask me what he should tell them about our progress on the current project.

Friday: decided that I'd better go to work, because everything was clearly in chaos without me. (BTW, I'm not management - I'm the senior developer on the Web team.)
9:05AM: missed a call from my manager, because I was in the shower.
9:26AM: my manager called while I was on the bus, to ask if I was coming in.
I ended up staying at work until about 9:15PM - normally, on Fridays, I leave right at 5 because I bowl in a league and it takes me two hours to get there, and it starts at 7. But since standing without falling over was a challenge, I figured there would be no way I could bowl.

Saturday (!!!):
3:27PM: missed a call from my manager. I was awake, and probably on my way to Starbucks for coffee and didn't hear the phone over the sound of traffic.
10:55PM: noticed that I'd missed the above call, from a number I didn't recognize, so I called back - it was my manager, wanting to know if I was available to work on Sunday. (I told him no, because even if I weren't sick, I already had a commitment today to go to a convention committee meeting.)

Imagine the treatment I'd be getting if I hadn't been sick.

I'm still not feeling great. I've had two bowls of soup, some pasta and some ice cream today, but I've been feeling pretty dizzy ever since I got up. As I mentioned above, I was supposed to go to a meeting today, but decided not to bother trying to do that, either, and have been in front of the computer all day.

Summary: I'm sick with something, I don't know what, and my manager is doing his best to make sure that I don't have an opportunity to get better. In fact, he seems hell-bent on making sure that I give whatever I have to everyone else in the company.

 

[bigdaddy]

The news is overdoing it like always so they scare you into watching and buying things.

My favorites are NY State said the flu was a massive emergency, it was the worst flu in four years. Four, not 40, four.

Or the NBC News "doctor" that said that we shouldn't listen to the CDC that it's really the worst in a while, and that it's not at it's peak. That the CDC was wrong and that she was right.

Or the fact the NBC station in Connecticut keeps reporting every death in the state from the flu. It's at 17 for the season. The state has 1% of the population of the USA. The CDC says on average 36,000 deaths are caused by the flu (and that's about the same as booze), so 1% of that is 360. There should be 360 deaths in CT by population, there has been 17. Not a perfect comparison but it works to show that the whole thing is overblown.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

The government can't control us as easily if we aren't in a panic over something.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Summary: I'm sick with something, I don't know what, and my manager is doing his best to make sure that I don't have an opportunity to get better. In fact, he seems hell-bent on making sure that I give whatever I have to everyone else in the company.

Toronto, like you, I don't know what it was that got me sick. It was definitely a bug of some sort. I surely had the telltale signs of the flu: coughing, fatigue, muscle aches, fever, and chills, at least during the first 24 hours. I was concerned I had bronchitis because my chest hurt when I coughed, and my throat was raw. Still, the coughing and feverish feeling persisted for days.

It sounded to me as if your manager was really pushing for you to get back to work. Geez, how sympathetic. Everyone must realize that their health comes first.