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

k8 do you want me to mail you some tamiflu & klonpin (to uh curb you from suicide)? I totally will!

friend had this two weeks ago. he said the aching / hallucinating was fairly severe, but not overwhelming -- the most surprising thing was the weakness. his bedroom was upstairs from the kitchen / bathroom and he said the trip down the stairs became a real issue. other severe thing was that while it broke after two days, it lingered for three weeks before he started feeling strong again

I actually have tamiflu waiting for me at a chemist half a mile up the road. And I'm too weak to walk from one side of the flat to the other. Klonopin no nononoo, cannot touch that stuff after having a little "problem" with it in the late 90s. Thanks for the offer, though, that's really sweet.

I think it's time to switch from ibuprofen back to paramol (mmm, codeine) and have another nap.

I swear to god, it's like I woke up suddenly 80.

Oh god, if I've got weeks of this stupid weakness I will kill myself, tamiflu side effects or no. Bah.

You can take ibuprofen AND paramol at the same time with no mad side effects (have been on both as prescribed by my doctor for a non-flu-related pain for three weeks now).

Is there any difference in symptoms between common or garden influenza and this swine flu thing, or is it really just the way it's knocking over people of all ages and spreading that's freaking everyone out? I've been floored with the flu a few times, so the thought of another bout of it, if it comes my way, isn't causing me sleepless nights. Should it?

I was recommended this by the doc as well, spaced at 2 hour intervals (first ibuprofen, two hours later paramol, 2 hours late ibuprofen etc.)

Hooray?:

An ugly scramble is brewing over the swine flu vaccine - and when it becomes available, Britain, the United States and other nations could find that the contracts they signed with pharmaceutical companies are easily broken.

Experts warn that during a global epidemic, which the world is in now, governments may be under tremendous pressure to protect their own citizens first before allowing companies to ship doses of vaccine out of the country.

That does not bode well for many nations, including the United States, which makes only 20 percent of the regular flu vaccines it uses, or Britain, where all of its flu vaccines are produced abroad.

"This isn't rocket science," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "If there is severe disease, countries will want to hang onto the vaccine for their own citizens."

lol that'll learn you, U.S. profit-centric pharm companies

I don't think it's actually that much difference from normal influenza (actual influenza as opposed to the usual headcold/lurgy type thing) in terms of severity.

What is different is that most people have some kind of built up immunity to most colds and flu so that you only really get them if your defenses are otherwise down. Swine flu is new, no one has immunity to it yet, so it can strike otherwise totally healthy people with alarming speed and contagion.

I think today, or yesterday, was the start of genuine panic about this, at least in the press.

Having now had it, I have started to panic way less. It is not the end times. It's a week in bed. Worse than a head cold, but better than wrist surgery.

Fun?:

Hundreds of thousands of Americans could die over the next two years if the vaccine for the new H1N1 influenza is not effective and, at the pandemic's peak, as much as 40% of the workforce could be affected, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Worldwide, up to a third of the Earth's 6 billion population is likely to become infected with the virus, according to the World Health Organization.

Although potentially frightening, the numbers are not dramatically different from the number of cases that might be encountered in a bad winter of seasonal flu. Even in an unremarkable year, an estimated 36,000 Americans die from complications of the flu.

The estimates, prepared more than a month ago but released only today in an interview with the Associated Press, are not based on an enhanced lethality of the new H1N1 virus, but rather on the lack of resistance to the virus in the general population and its continuing spread through the summer months, when flu viruses normally are less active.

Twenty states are now reporting widespread or regional flu activity, with the H1N1 virus predominating, according to Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. "That's very unusual at this time of year," she said. "It's a testament to how susceptible people are to the virus."

do i have it?

i had a sore throat on monday, no other illness.
yesterday i had more of a cough, but still nothing more.
today i awake with a tremendous blocked nose and more mild coughing,

not feeling tired as such, and my appetite is fine.

is this just a cold?

I think the defining factor is whether or not you have a temperature of 38 or above, in addition to any of those symptoms.

Mister CJ went down with swine flu on Thursday last week, and is still pretty bad. I succumbed to it on Monday, but my symptoms were much milder than his and I'm feeling considerably better already.

You should challenge it to a rematch. It would be good for people's morale to see this.

My wife had it for a week and a half. Symptoms weren't too bad. I didn't catch it at all. Very disappointed, as I wanted time off work, due to being lazy.

problem solved
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8196786.stm

I thought it said 'flying rabbits'.

first case found at my kid's daycare this week.

i mean today

i think i might have had it already???

YOU THINK?!?

i was sick, lady, and how

yikes.

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'...