don't panic, but "SWINE FLU COULD SPREAD GLOBALLY"

a good friend of mine had it, and the pharmacist i work/ed for had it too

My grandmother (who has a chronic cough anyway) had it, she's fine now tho.

Like gbx I think I probably had it maybe 6 or 8 weeks ago. fuck I was ill. not diagnosed tho.

lol

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,656028,00.html

I saw a poster yesterday, revealing that swine flu is actually a "hoax" - the pharmaceutical companies and the governments are flying airplanes high in the atmosphere emitting a substance that leads to flu-like symptoms. Tell your friends!

Damned contrails.

where do spencer and laura h. stand on the swine flu epidemic

Much flu already in the local schools and spreading fast.

It is probably H1N1, but I don't think the local doctors are bothering to do the lab work needed to pin that down conclusively, since it wouldn't change anything they are doing.

All influenza is nasty, miserable stuff. Your muscles ache. Your head aches. Your eyes ache. You get chills followed by a high fever. Your nose runs like a hose. Your mucus membranes feel stripped and raw. It's all you can do to stand up and go to the bathroom. All you can do is lie there and take it.

I saw a poster yesterday, revealing that swine flu is actually a "hoax" - the pharmaceutical companies and the governments are flying airplanes high in the atmosphere emitting a substance that leads to flu-like symptoms. Tell your friends!

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, October 21, 2009 4:27 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark

thnx for the heads up!

i don't have health insurance -- this is gonna be grebt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n47aB9vJqzc

I came down with it on the 8th (after I had been AT THE AIRPORT!!! a few days before), still coughing uncontrollably at times and hating life in general. Tried to get some antivirals so we could still travel overseas, but ended up having to cancel the trip. It's at epidemic levels in WA, pretty much the only virus in town, so unless you end up hospitalized they don't test for it.

yep i just got over it (although like jaq still coughing and wheezing), onset through the break was i shit you not the worst 5 sickness days of my life, and ive had some awful stuff in the past. you really dont want to catch this, it makes good old seasonal flu seem like no big deal

Jaq and jj, keep an eye on that cough/wheeze to make sure it isn't bronchitis or pneumonia, both of which are extremely common follow-ons to the main event.

The pneumonia, if it develops rapidly, can even kill you. That is what accounted for a large proportion of the deaths in 1919, although a goodly number were much faster and more gruesome than mere pneumonia, which is a comparatively benevolent way to die.

Yes definitely good advice - if the cough lasts more than 10 days, you need to get back in for a check.

FYI: not working up h1n1 is STD operating procedure right now. If it quacks like a duck etc

Right. That's it. From now on, Mexican pigs are not allowed to sneeze at me anymore.

huh, I had a day of being crippled by what at the time I was assuming was flu (perhaps swine), but then the next day I was fairly alright. Except now I've had a nasty cough for about three weeks. Am I going to die?

i've had a cold for two weeks, I'm reasonably sure it is just a cold since I never got a fever. kid and wife have it too. at least dead virus injection vaccines are coming to the pediatrician in two days, though no word on when they'll be available to the rest of us.

my 3 1/2 year old daughter has now been SWINED. poor kiddo.

so, do i just accept that our 5 y/o will now get it, or what.

also our reg pharmacy is out of kids tamiflu, so they sent us to another place, which is grinding out pills to make suspension, but this is not covered under our insurance w/out all kinds of red tape.

Oh your poor little kids :( It would be so difficult to keep your 5 y/o from getting it, maybe possible, but so much hand washing and mask wearing and quarantine for your younger one. I hope it's mild for all of you.

Here's a hint for the afflicted - something that seemed to help with the coughing was those anesthetic Sucrets/Cepacol lozenges. They did the total and complete throat numbing, and that was great while I was awake. But when it wore off after I'd lain down to sleep, it was absolute hell, almost to the point of cough-til-you-puke nonstoppability. So don't do that.

oh joy I have a fever after being sick for two weeks, but maybe it's just this shitty thermometer and panic

awww Hunt3r that's a nightmare!

Is H1N1 appreciably more of an ass-kicker than garden variety flu? I ask because I'm reasonably sure that I'm fluish now, but it doesn't really seem worse than any other bout of flu I've had in the past. Not that it's any walk in the park, mind, but I figured I'd feel more like warmed-over death than I do. Maybe that's just around the corner...?

(Should note that I have no idea whether this is swine flu or not. I just assumed since that seems to be what's going around.)

for me, h1n1 was a wicked wicked asskicker

i am beginning to think that i did ~not have h1n1, because my ass was not kicked in the slightest, i was just kinda sick for a bit

I know someone who knows someone who knows someone (no, really!) who was given the official H1N1 diagnosis for what felt like a moderately bad cold, so I think the answer is 'depends'...

my brother, his wife and 2 kids have got it. pretty bad by the sounds, shivering cold, a really bad flu. jack is 5 and has asthma so we were a bit worried but it seems he will be ok. doctor didnt prescribe them tamiflu as he said it causes too many side effects. there's a few kids at jack's school out sick but i dont know if its swine flu or not.

So just a heads up for anyone in MA - I'm still working at the Dept of Public Health and as of yesterday H1N1 has officially hit the state and they expect shit to get pretty bad.

Is H1N1 appreciably more of an ass-kicker than garden variety flu?

First part of the answer: most people misunderstand what constitutes the flu and misname many ailments and symptoms as flu. Best example is "stomach flu". No such thing. Influenza is a resperatory virus.

The real flu is always an ass-kicker. It will lay you flat on your back and bedridden for days and make you about as miserable as you can ever recall being.

Second part of the answer: right now H1N1 is not appreciably more of an ass-kicker than any other influenza., although it has been spreading faster than ordinary flu because most of the population hasn't been exposed to it before. It is already pandemic. Still going strong and bound to get stronger.

What matters even more about H1N1 is the sinister possibility of it mutating into something much more deadly than ordinary flu.

We know it has that possibility because it already has mutated into that sort of virulent strain before, in the flu pandemic of 1918-1920. It has been estimated that 1/3 of all humans alive at that time caught H1N1 and perhaps as many as 150,000,000 people died of it, or of complications like pneumonia. Many people died in as little as 24 hours after the onset of symptoms, and died gruesomely I should add.

Because flu virus mutates quickly and esaily, and because several hundred million people are likely to catch it this time around, the (well-grounded) fear is that somewhere along the way it will mutate into a killer such as we saw back then. That's why the WHO and CDC are on this thing like white on rice, even though right now the H1N1 virus seems to be no worse than other flus.

swine flu, catch it before it mutates into something more deadly.

my kid is doing pretty well so far, thankfully.

My two kids get their (free) H1N1 shots this Saturday, though I'm a bit bummed that after all that buildup, shortages mean my wife and I no longer fit the criteria. I want my vaccine, dammit!

Two weeks ago I spent most of the day fielding calls from ppl concerned that they were going to be forced into getting vaccinated but now all I get are calls from ppl who can't get the H1N1 vaccine because of production/shipping delays. I bet some of these calls are even the same ppl who just want something to complain about.

oh, no doubt - some people just aren't happy unless they are pissed off about something.

In other potentially theraputic news, one of the guys in the company cafe handed me a mug of steaming hot apple juice laced with huge amounts of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, fresh mint, cayenne, etc. I don't think I've coughed more then twice since I downed it.

my insurer overrode their policy and approved our tamiflu at standard copay rate. more astonishingly, walgreens took care of this and then actually called me back to confirm.

^health reform we can all get behind

Would a spit-transfer from someone who had taken the vaccine a day or two previous and an un-vaccined person do any good? Don't vaccines cause a low-grade version of the flu it's for?

depends on if they're live or dead

the vaccines, not the person

the fuck, man

Even the killed vaccines can potentially cause enough of an immune response to cause some of the flu-like symptoms, like fever and lethargy and such, since those are symptoms caused by the activation of the immune system. Cytokines!

STORM

"Cytokine Storm" sounds like a Tom Clancy novel...

it's official: it's in Belgium. already killed five people (all kids i think). :-(

At least two of them were adults, a 36 year old woman and a 70 year old man who already had pneumonia, I believe.

^ just from seeing the news on tv, not keeping an xls though

We took our kid to the doctor for his seasonal flu last week and it took both of us to hold him down for the shot. Tomorrow, it's just me and him as I try to get his H1N1 shot.

xpost I loved how on HLN.be people were all going "healthy before falling sick with the flu, LOL EVERYONE IS HEALTHY BEFORE BEING SICK!" God people can be so dumb (me included, I know).

I honestly don't know how the people more afraid of the vaccine than the flu itself can even leave the house every day.

xpost I loved how on HLN.be people were all going "healthy before falling sick with the flu, LOL EVERYONE IS HEALTHY BEFORE BEING SICK!" God people can be so dumb (me included, I know).

I think they say this because most people who die from the flu have pre-existing health conditions that make them too weak to fight it. When an otherwise healthy person dies from the flu it's more news-worthy (and more scary to the rest of us).