I’ve had some kind of flu for the last couple of days - I don’t know if it’s regular flu or swine flu, but what I do know is that it’s been pretty weak and at no point has going to the doctor remotely entered my mind (although, I’m the kind of person who has to feel really sick for a number of days before considering going to the doctor, unlike some people who seem to go whenever they have a sniffle). I’ve had all the normal symptoms – fever, persistent headache, dizzyness, nausea, sore throat etc – but they’ve all been fairly mild; unpleasant but no big deal really. I’ve been working throughout, just taking paracetamol, and apart from feeling a bit crap for a few days and having to have a couple of early nights because I’ve been extra tired, it’s been pretty much business as usual, just a little annoying. I’m already feeling better, if not 100% yet – in all I’d rate it at about 1/5 of the potency of the last bout of winter flu I had, or less.
Lots of people seem to be panicking about swine flu though, which is somewhat puzzling to me – the media probably has a lot to answer for. Ever since the 2009 pandemic began, the media has been scaremongering about swine flu, concentrating on individual but really very rare cases of complications, and to my mind generally blowing the whole thing out of all proportion. Sure, it’s a pandemic – but that just means lots of people get it. So far except for a tiny number of cases people just seem to get over it – ok there’s a minority of bad cases, but those happen every year in seasonal flu too (even among the young & healthy, they just don’t get reported because it’s normal and statistically miniscule).
I can understand the concern from people who have underlying medical conditions; the sorts of people who would normally need to have the seasonal flu vaccine. But everyone else just needs to calm down. The hysteria going around at the moment seems rather irrational, and very much fueled by the media concentrating on headline-grabbing minority cases rather than the general picture. It’s almost as if the media wants it to be as serious as the Spanish Flu, because that’s better news than the reality.
Current estimates are that, of those people that get swine flu badly enough to seek medical assistance (and presumably that’s genuinely need to seek it, rather than wasting the GP’s time because they panic), approximately 0.5% of those people (1 in 200) may die from it – and note that that excludes the vast majority who will just breeze through it like a regular virus. That’s pretty much the same as seasonal flu. It seems the vast, vast majority of people will just get regular flu symptoms, feel a bit lousy for a few days, and recover. Based on current reports, most people’s symptoms will be milder than seasonal flu anyway.
I don’t know – maybe it will get worse, but it seems like people are doing more damage to themselves with all this panic than the actual virus is doing.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
While I agree the story has been blown out of proportion, the Spanish Flu started as a mild flu in the spring but mutated to a much deadlier strain by the regular flu season:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic#Deadly_second_wave
I don’t know what’s going in in the UK, but from what I can tell here in the US there isn’t much panic and public health officials are focusing on preparing for a possible resurgence during regular flu season. So yeah, the story was overblown and no one should panic (although getting a regular flu shot is a good idea!), but it isn’t clear at this point whether the comparison to the Spanish Flu is as ridiculous as it may seem.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Yep – agree with you on all counts there…
I’ve also been feeling a little worse for waer the last couple of days with cold / flu like symptoms (but so far relatively mild). Took today off work sick.
Hopefully on the mend now.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Yeah. I got flu last Friday and was on sick leave until Wednesday morning. I was just tired the whole time and couldn’t think straight.
I logged onto he NHS website on Tuesday morning to see when my doctor’s office would be open, because I was still feeling sick and so wanted to see a doctor in case my work wanted a doctor’s note or something. I saw the big notice on the NHS UK website about swine flu and so went through their online symptom checker, which told me to call an ambulance, as I stay in an area town has swine flu cases. I called my doctor and she said that my symptoms were okay for me to just take paracetamol and the usual flu stuff.
On Wednesday I was feeling normal again, so initially I started working from home and after a few hours I was still feeling fine, so I wanted to come into work, but my boss said I must stay home. He then told me on Wednesday night to stay for another day, before coming into work. All the media hype about it is getting people really paranoid.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Since I work from home, there’s no issue about transmission to co-workers (unless it’s found a way to go through the internet!). And since I work for myself, I have to be pretty damn sick not to be at work – I think I’ve only taken one day off in the last 3 years, and that’s because I had a proper, delerium-packed fever at the time. This fever was a big wuss in comparison; just a bit tired, dizzy and hot, and paracetamol sorted most of that out.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
If you would read the media reports that you criticize you would have a better idea of what the fuss is about.
There is no immunity in the population to swine flu (except possibly in those who were alive in 1918), unlike seasonal flu.
It is now spreading faster than any influenza in history and this in the season when it is supposed to be dormant. What will happen when it gets cold?
Swine flu appears to resemble the 1918 pandemic virus in the fact that it is capable of embedding itself deep in lung tissue and causing deadly infections. This is very different from seasonal flu, which does not replicate in the lungs. http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Why-Swine-Flu-Differs-From-Seasonal-Flu-50671-1/
The U.K.’s department of health (not the media) is saying that because it could infect 30% of the population, it might kill more than 60,000 people in the U.K. this fall. Compare this to seasonal flu, which kills only 6,000 people in most years. And all of this is based on it not becoming more virulent, which runs contrary to past history of pandemic influenza. This is a worst-case “realistic” scenario but does not account for much worse scenarios in which the virus comes back much more virulent, as pandemic influenza is known to do.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124776040193152381.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Oxford Economics warns that swine flu could extend the recession by two years and possibly result in an economic meltdown.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/17/swine-flu-recession-thinktank
The media only reports these stories. It doesn’t create them. So ignore them if you want, but it might be more prudent to prepare for a very bad situation this fall and winter and beyond. The threat is great even if your recent bout was mild.
July 18th, 2009 at 3:13 am
i always advice my kids to wear face masks when going into crowded areas. swine flu is really scary and i dont want my kids getting infected by it.
July 18th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
@silver: sure, all this is fact, but facts need to be interpreted in context. Feedback on those lab studies has been that while true, a virus behaves quite differently in the wild than in the lab, and different in humans than ferrets. Plus, it’s a question of degrees – sure, the virus may have the potential to be very deadly, but right now, it’s not. Supposedly a million cases plus are estimated to have occurred in the US alone, resulting in 263 deaths as of today. That’s a fatality rate of 0.03% even of the people that get infected, or 0.00006% of the whole population. Statistically, you’re taking more of a risk getting into your car in the morning.
I’m not saying that it won’t get worse – we just don’t know whether a worse strain might emerge in the winter (although it’s worth remembering that the 1918 virus was given ideal mutation & breeding conditions due to vast numbers of sick soldiers being packed into crowded transports – in contrast in peace time the sickest tend to be isolated). But to be panicking about it right now given the stats in the real world seems an overreaction. Regardless of existing immunity, the vast, vast majority of people infected just get over it with mild symptoms. In fact, if a worse strain does come back later, those who got it around now are likely to be immune, so getting it in its current form could actually be beneficial.
As a local doctor said recently “it’s worth taking seriously, but it’s not the plague”. Time will tell whether I’m underreacting or other people are overreacting.
July 18th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
You are right that it could be better to become infected now to gain immunity. But your theory that it was crowded transports that fostered mutation in 1918 is not accurate. In fact, it is believed that swine played the key role of co-hosting both avian and human influenza viruses which combined by a process called reassortment to form the deadly strain that killed so many people. This could happen again as swine flu moves through Asia where the pigs are now hosting a variety of avian flu that kills 65% of all humans it infects. So it is the threat that a new virus presents that makes it worthy of attention (no one suggests panic – your word), not the current reality, whatever that may be. And since the potential consequences of that threat are so earth-shakingly horrible (a 30% infection rate and a 65% death rate are a bad combination), it makes sense to 1) be informed – hence the good job that the media does – and 2) make preparations just in case.
July 19th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
It is not overated but it definetly is over hyped.
Unfortunatly that u are ill so near the important day.
Same here I am in cough and fever too. Now I have to be satisfied with choclates only.
If u were infected with swine flu(how?) then u would have been in a lot worse condition so u are certainly in minor sickness. Nothing which some rest and fresh air cannot improve.
July 21st, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I cannot believe you went to work with the flu, which is 98% likely to be swine flu according to HPA stats! This action is irresponsible, arrogant and careless! It may be mild to you, but to a lot of others it is serious! I nearly died of pneumonia from a chest infection when I was 14, no doubt caught from some arrogant idiot who found it mild. The fact ordinary flu also kills is no reason to be lax on swine flu. If you’re sick at any time, stay at home and keep your germs to yourself!
July 21st, 2009 at 4:52 pm
I work from home, as I’ve said here already. Therefore not an issue.