4 ms·

The problem is that most people call a mild cold or even an abortive infection "flu". Actual influenza doesn't happen that commonly to healthy adults and is re

The problem is that most people call a mild cold or even an abortive infection "flu". Actual influenza doesn't happen that commonly to healthy adults and is really unpleasant. Cooking your vitals at 103F for 3 days is also probably not without risk of long-term damage, and there's always some risk of hospitalization even in healthy adults.

subharmonicon 4y ago
Calling every sniffle “the flu” is a bit of a peev of mine. I hear it from people all the time. Based on the descriptions I have read of influenza, I’m relatively certain I have either never had it or have had it maybe once in my adult life. Most years I get a bad cold that lasts 5 days or so (plus some time for my sinuses to completely return to normal) and maybe a couple lesser colds. None of these are “the flu”. I get the flu vaccine every year, but only started that around age 35 or so. I’m in my early 50’s now.
- klocksib 4y ago
  I think part of it is the guilt of taking time off of work so everything gets dubbed "the flu" to justify it. I've only had the flu once that I know of after an conference in Las Vegas about 12yrs ago, and it was the worst illness I've ever had. I went into work on day 1, immediately turned around went home, and nearly passed out going up the stairs. The next three days were a fugue of blinking and the shadows from the trees outside moving.
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    Yeah back when I first started WFH (2015-ish) I skipped the flu shot for 2-3 years due to simple laziness until I finally caught the real thing. It was 3 solid days of 103F fever which was sweating in bed, combined with all kind of mild hallucinatory effects and complete incapacity, and the week after the fever broke I had a hard time just moving my body for more than 30-60 minutes at a time before having to lie down. The hangover lasted about a month before my energy levels got back to normal ("post-viral fatigue" before that term became popular -- also there's probably a risk of persistent ME/CFS or "long influenza" post-recovery). For anyone with unvaccinated proper influenza there should be no question of if you're going to work or not. You're not going to be capable of it. Trying to order groceries online should be highly mentally taxing. I'd strongly recommend once someone sees a fever above 100F that they get antivirals as well and not try to suffer through it like a dumbass. (Tangentially, compare to people who "got the worst sickness of their adult life" in late 2019 and swear they were patient zero of COVID in the US -- probably just influenza, 19/20 was a bad season before COVID hit).
- jghn 4y ago
  My favorite is "I caught the 24 hour flu". No, sorry, you had some stomach bug.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  This is what wikipedia says. It doesn’t sound particularly uncommon. “During seasonal epidemics, it is estimated that about 80% of otherwise healthy people who have a cough or sore throat have the flu.”
  - subharmonicon 4y ago
    From the source paper that is being referenced (from Nature): > During seasonal influenza epidemics, diagnosis on the basis of clinical presentation has reasonable accuracy in previously healthy young and middle-aged adults, in whom the presence of fever with either cough or sore throat is associated with influenza virus infection in ~80% of patients. So Wikipedia doesn’t add that this statement is about the accuracy of diagnosis by a clinician, and completely ignores the important symptom of a fever. Just prior to the statement referring to 80%, Wikipedia also states the following, with references: > In a typical year, influenza viruses infect 5–15% of the global population
    - osigurdson 4y ago
      Agree. The conversation on this thread seemed to be trending toward the conclusion that influenza is rare. It certainly is not.
kryogen1c 4y ago
> The problem is that most people call a mild cold or even an abortive infection "flu". This is one of a class of problem I've identified as "stuff i learned in my childhood that is simply wrong". For some reason, I grew up with the impression that vomiting and/or GI issues could be the flu, or the 24 hour flu. I'm not entirely sure how respiratory viruses with fevers became confused in such a manner.
_benedict 4y ago
This is just as untrue as it was for Covid. Some people are asymptomatic with flu, others mildly ill, others bedridden but for an unpredictable period of time, and others are hospitalised or killed. Without a PCR test it’s just a non-specific viral infection. Colloquially flu is often reserved for a non-specific viral infection that makes you very unwell, but that could be a “common cold virus”, while somebody with a “cold” might be suffering from influenza! I’m surprised that this belief still holds despite the wide exposure to higher quality information on this topic during the pandemic.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  I'm not talking about asymptomatic or abortive infections and talking about typical symptomatic infections in otherwise healthy (but unvaccinated) adults. Rhinovirus, common cold coronaviruses, metapneumovirus and even RSV don't commonly cause the high fever seen in typical symptomatic influenza cases--which is what the influenza vaccine is seeking to avoid. And the whole point is that vaccination will help to prevent a symptomatic infection typically characterized by ~103F fever for up to 3 days with one of those asymptomatic infections that you mention. And the problem is that most adults may go years or even decades between those severe enough flu infections. They're mostly likely just catching colds. Maybe they caught a flu strain and their adaptive or innate immune system fought it off so they really did have "24 hour flu". But the point is that those very mild respiratory infections are not characteristic of a typical symptomatic influenza presentation which can be prevented by the vaccine. People become complacent talking about those symptoms as being typical of influenza, while typical symptomatic presentation of influenza is much worse. And even if you want to go down the rabbit hold of arguing PCR this or that and maybe there's a wild amount of asymptomatic influenza infections every year -- it doesn't really matter -- the point is the severity of the infection on the higher end of the distribution. And rhinoviruses really do lack that level of severity because they don't carry the same disease burden and don't kill as many people.
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    It is also ridiculous that we now "know" so much about viruses that I have to type out that much crap in order to just say "influenza virus kicks your ass way harder than the common cold".

subharmonicon 4y ago

Calling every sniffle “the flu” is a bit of a peev of mine. I hear it from people all the time. Based on the descriptions I have read of influenza, I’m relatively certain I have either never had it or have had it maybe once in my adult life. Most years I get a bad cold that lasts 5 days or so (plus some time for my sinuses to completely return to normal) and maybe a couple lesser colds. None of these are “the flu”. I get the flu vaccine every year, but only started that around age 35 or so. I’m in my early 50’s now.

klocksib 4y ago
I think part of it is the guilt of taking time off of work so everything gets dubbed "the flu" to justify it. I've only had the flu once that I know of after an conference in Las Vegas about 12yrs ago, and it was the worst illness I've ever had. I went into work on day 1, immediately turned around went home, and nearly passed out going up the stairs. The next three days were a fugue of blinking and the shadows from the trees outside moving.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  Yeah back when I first started WFH (2015-ish) I skipped the flu shot for 2-3 years due to simple laziness until I finally caught the real thing. It was 3 solid days of 103F fever which was sweating in bed, combined with all kind of mild hallucinatory effects and complete incapacity, and the week after the fever broke I had a hard time just moving my body for more than 30-60 minutes at a time before having to lie down. The hangover lasted about a month before my energy levels got back to normal ("post-viral fatigue" before that term became popular -- also there's probably a risk of persistent ME/CFS or "long influenza" post-recovery). For anyone with unvaccinated proper influenza there should be no question of if you're going to work or not. You're not going to be capable of it. Trying to order groceries online should be highly mentally taxing. I'd strongly recommend once someone sees a fever above 100F that they get antivirals as well and not try to suffer through it like a dumbass. (Tangentially, compare to people who "got the worst sickness of their adult life" in late 2019 and swear they were patient zero of COVID in the US -- probably just influenza, 19/20 was a bad season before COVID hit).
jghn 4y ago
My favorite is "I caught the 24 hour flu". No, sorry, you had some stomach bug.
osigurdson 4y ago
This is what wikipedia says. It doesn’t sound particularly uncommon. “During seasonal epidemics, it is estimated that about 80% of otherwise healthy people who have a cough or sore throat have the flu.”
- subharmonicon 4y ago
  From the source paper that is being referenced (from Nature): > During seasonal influenza epidemics, diagnosis on the basis of clinical presentation has reasonable accuracy in previously healthy young and middle-aged adults, in whom the presence of fever with either cough or sore throat is associated with influenza virus infection in ~80% of patients. So Wikipedia doesn’t add that this statement is about the accuracy of diagnosis by a clinician, and completely ignores the important symptom of a fever. Just prior to the statement referring to 80%, Wikipedia also states the following, with references: > In a typical year, influenza viruses infect 5–15% of the global population
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    Agree. The conversation on this thread seemed to be trending toward the conclusion that influenza is rare. It certainly is not.

kryogen1c 4y ago

> The problem is that most people call a mild cold or even an abortive infection "flu". This is one of a class of problem I've identified as "stuff i learned in my childhood that is simply wrong". For some reason, I grew up with the impression that vomiting and/or GI issues could be the flu, or the 24 hour flu. I'm not entirely sure how respiratory viruses with fevers became confused in such a manner.

_benedict 4y ago

This is just as untrue as it was for Covid. Some people are asymptomatic with flu, others mildly ill, others bedridden but for an unpredictable period of time, and others are hospitalised or killed. Without a PCR test it’s just a non-specific viral infection. Colloquially flu is often reserved for a non-specific viral infection that makes you very unwell, but that could be a “common cold virus”, while somebody with a “cold” might be suffering from influenza! I’m surprised that this belief still holds despite the wide exposure to higher quality information on this topic during the pandemic.

lamontcg 4y ago
I'm not talking about asymptomatic or abortive infections and talking about typical symptomatic infections in otherwise healthy (but unvaccinated) adults. Rhinovirus, common cold coronaviruses, metapneumovirus and even RSV don't commonly cause the high fever seen in typical symptomatic influenza cases--which is what the influenza vaccine is seeking to avoid. And the whole point is that vaccination will help to prevent a symptomatic infection typically characterized by ~103F fever for up to 3 days with one of those asymptomatic infections that you mention. And the problem is that most adults may go years or even decades between those severe enough flu infections. They're mostly likely just catching colds. Maybe they caught a flu strain and their adaptive or innate immune system fought it off so they really did have "24 hour flu". But the point is that those very mild respiratory infections are not characteristic of a typical symptomatic influenza presentation which can be prevented by the vaccine. People become complacent talking about those symptoms as being typical of influenza, while typical symptomatic presentation of influenza is much worse. And even if you want to go down the rabbit hold of arguing PCR this or that and maybe there's a wild amount of asymptomatic influenza infections every year -- it doesn't really matter -- the point is the severity of the infection on the higher end of the distribution. And rhinoviruses really do lack that level of severity because they don't carry the same disease burden and don't kill as many people.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  It is also ridiculous that we now "know" so much about viruses that I have to type out that much crap in order to just say "influenza virus kicks your ass way harder than the common cold".