Holiday togetherness has given contagious bugs a boost, experts warn
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comAh-choo! Cold and flu season ramps up across the U.S.
Seeded on Thu Dec 30, 2010 8:53 AM EST (msnbc.com)
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"If you feel that sick, you need to see the doctor".
How, may I ask, are you supposed to GET to the doctor? How can you get up, get dressed, drive to the doctor's office, sit in the overcrowded waiting room, etc, with a fever of 102?? I live alone, and have nobody that would be available to drive me. See the doctor, ya, right. Not.
You are totally right.....I was so sick I ended up in the ER because I didn't feel like going to the doctor.
BTW, they say to stay home from work when you are sick. Where I work, you do not get sick days and it counts against you when you call off so many people come to work sick and just spread it around. Ridiculous!
I ended up in the hospital last month with a bad case of pneomonia because I didn't go to the doctor sooner. I know its tough to get there, but if you don't get to the doctor it could get worse and worse.
Hard rule in our office, if your sick DON'T come in. We have three sick days and we are expected to use them when sick. My boss understands that one person sick at home is better than half the office sick at work.
We just had a co-worker that came in to work on Monday with the stomach flu. Seriously. We were like..wtf? GO HOME! So he did finally leave but was right back here on Tuesday. Touching everything. Thank goodness we have hand sanitizer here. My thoughts are...if you are sick..stay home and keep your germs to yourself!!!
The headlines should read:
Ah-choo! Vitamin D deficiency season ramps up across the U.S.
they need to do a study of why some people get the flu every year, and others do not. ----- there must be a common factor somewhere.
That is an interesting question ronpal. Is it genetic? Or is it how much we take care of ourselves. I rarely get sick (knocking wood) an occasional cold here and there, but that's it. I eat a lot of garlic and veggies and drink tons of water. Makes me wonder.
Forgot to mention to eat healthy (fruits and veggies containing vitamin c) and to stay active with a little cardio or some weights as well and sleep. Lots and lots of sleep at least 8 hours minimum and your body's immune system should be on overkill.
Lots of water!!! Just my two cents..LOL
True! I forgot water. Lots of it.
i have been doing my best to not get sick this year.. last year i had gotten a bad case of the flu which was treated as swine flu and it was the worst ever.. but of course i woke up this morning with a sore throat and achy body and of course i couldnt call out of work because other upper people like to come in when they are sick too so i dont get too.. lammmme!
Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands.
Plus it's not that easy to stay home from work...most bosses expect you to be there no matter what.
Yeah, no kidding, especially in food service, the one place where the workers should stay home when they are sick.
Definitely a slow news week. There is nothing here that's either note worthy or new.
LOL..I was thinking the same thing
Hahaha totally what I was thinking as well.
you get the flu, get to an urgent care center. They'll get you in and out quick. i go a place called MedExpress in Pittsburgh where i live. i don't have to sit around feeling like crap at a ER or wait a couple days to get in to my doc's office.
Not here......last time I went to the UC center I was there almost 3 hours before being seen!
that sucks. 3 hours while your sick is just salt in the wound!!! Haven't seen that here, but can't speak for Ohio.
The urgent care centers where I live are great. But I had to take my son to one in my parents' hometown, and they were awful. Waited 2 hours for them to misdiagnose him (they said he had swine flu, but he had already had it a month before and was therefore immune), test for the flu I already told them was highly unlikely and treat incorrectly (antibiotic dosage too small to be effective) the ear infection and strep throat he actually had.
If you haven't gotten your flu shot yet...make sure you pay attention to store ads. Got mine at one of the Kroger's stores for $10...on a Sunday afternoon with no waiting.
I feel sorry for you.
A more informed person, health conscience person, would never get the flu vaccine.
The drug companies own studies show that only 1 in 100 benefit from a flu shot and that's if you believe it helps that many, of which I dont.
The flu vaccine weakens your immune system with all the added 'fillers' in them. Mercury (although there is a new name for it now, just like they keep renaming high fructose corn syrup), formaldehyde and a host of other great products.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIjm9w_-tNY
And then you have Mr. Bill Gates telling his colleagues that:
Vaccines? Not for me. Vitamin D has been shown to be 800 percent more effective for avoiding the flu. But you will never be told that because the drug companies dont' have a patent on Vitaman D.. yet...
The mercury thing is Thimerosol and I had a severe allergic reaction to it long ago which is why I can't have flu shots now. People need to know they are getting a nice dose of mercury with their vaccination! This season a nurse told me about the Vitamin D and I've been taking that. I'm the only person in my family who hasn't been sick even though I've been taking care of everyone else!
No flu vac's for me thanks!
last time i had a flu shot, i got sick the next day, no flu shots for me
As a physician myself, the physician's recommendation in this article bothers me tremendously. How irresponsible of any medical professional to recommend antiviral medication for influenza to the general population. Studies have clearly shown that these medications do not shorten the course of the flu "significantly", but only do so by about one day. In addition, antiviral medications are only indicated for patients who are at high risk of complications from the flu (patients with underlying health conditions such as asthma, immunodeficiencies, diabetes, or the elderly or extremely young infants), or for household contacts of these high-risk people -- antivirals are NOT indicated for patients with the flu who are not at increased risk of complications.
In addition, like all medications, antivirals carry their own risk of side effects - and as they are not a necessary treatment for the flu in an otherwise healthy person (eg, the flu will go away on its own, taking on average one day longer than it would without the medication), those risks, as with any medication, may well outweigh the benefits.
Indiscriminate use of antiviral medication for influenza will only lead to influenza becoming resistant to antiviral medications such as Tamiflu (oseltamivir) -- as we have seen happen over and over again with bacteria becoming resistant to overuse of antibiotics. Antiviral-resistant influenza virus is the last thing the world needs.
PLEASE, physicians, do not overprescribe antiviral medications. Pharmaceutical companies, do not encourage overprescribing by placing advertisements for your antiviral medications in popular magazines and other media aimed at the general population. And patients, despite feeling crummy with the flu, please understand that unless a discussion with your doctor leads to the decision that treatment is absolutely necessary, please don't request (much less insist upon) a prescription for an antiviral medication - PLEASE be willing to rest, stay hydrated, and treat yourself symptomatically for an additional day rather than contributing to general overuse of medications and increasing the risk of influenza becoming resistant to the few antivirals we have in our arsenal to effectively fight it.
It may seem strange in our "fix it quick" society, but once in awhile, when you're sick, just using common sense, resting, and taking care of yourself really are better for you than taking unnecessary prescription medications.
According to Dr. Niman at http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/ Tamiflu is a neurominidase inhibitor. It directly attacks the H1N1 life cycle by inhibiting the enzyme required for the virus to be released from infected cells so it can infect other cells. Symptoms are lessened because viral load is decreased.
AMEN x 1000!!! Can you have someone skywrite this in my town??? Thanks!
Or you could just make sure you vitamin D levels are between 50-70 nl/ml and don't worry about getting the flu.
Sad our medical industry is hell bent on treatments after you get sick, an FDA and government that promote food that will make you sick and nobody (except the crazies in the holistic field) take actions with real studies on vitamins and supplements that can either cure or prevent you from being there in the first place.
Two quotes for thought:
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. ~Voltaire
Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents. ~Peter Mere Latham
Agree.
Wash hands with soap, especially bathroom/restroom used, for I have seen people forgot washing their hands with soap. Slow down and wash hands with soap.
A lot of water, at least eight glasses of water, excluding whatever liquid, such as beer, tea, coffee, soda...
Fruit and egg are good things to have daily, especially in flu season.
Do not share utensils. Cleanse office phone if it has been shared with someone else. ...
Balanced diet can reinforce the immune system for defense and offense.
I asked my physician for Tamiflu one year when I was taking care of a very sick husband (I've never seen him that sick before or after) and two very young children I miraculously kept from getting sick. I started to get the same symptoms as my husband had and called the doctor. He knows I rarely ever use meds but this time I had to. We have no family around and me getting sick would have meant a six month old baby and a five year old child without care. Thankfully the Tamiflu did it. I did get a little bit sick but not much. That being said I agree with codoc's statement that medications are over prescribed with disastrous results. I know plenty of people who ask for stuff all the time.
My employees get sick a lot. Mostly upper respiratory infections. It's amazing. They constantly get ill. My husband and I hardly ever. We believe it's due to a few factors. The employees smoke. We do not. They don't eat very healthy food. We make a point of it. But we belive that not smoking is the key factor . When I smoked for a few years in my late teens and early twenties I was always sick with upper respiratory infections. Once I stopped smoking I rarely became ill.
Although I don't keep handsanitizers around or disinfectant sprays we do spray the office regularly when we have a sick employee and that has helped reduce the spread of infections. We do provide sickdays and encourage/at times insists they be used when someone is genuinely ill. The problem is that we live in a productivity and performance based society. People don't dare take time off to keep sick kids or themselves at home and the germs keep moving on. We saw this when our kids when to daycare of a few years. Parents medicated their kids to the point of them being stoned with the cold meds and sent them to daycare. There the ill kids spread the joy and when the cold meds wore off and the kids spiked a fever the parents acted all surprised.... But many of these parents were lower income and held jobs without sick leave etc. For some of them missing work put them at risk of losing their hourly wage jobs.
News writing standards are worse than ever. This include MSNBC writers, Associated Press writers, and so on. Many of the articles seem to be written by teenage interns and frequently include incorrect medical and scientific information, or liberal political bias.
What do you expect its winter time. It has happened every winter for the last 500 years or more.
the question is ---- why do some people experience this regularly, while others do not ??
Codoc is right on point. If you are basically healthy you should not need the shot. If you are not healthy take good doses(the RDA is way low) of vitamin D3, and maybe some K to help assimilation.
"experts expect to see fewer people sickened by the H1N1 strain this year, Zimmer says." The is absurd. H1N1 mortality was shown to be about 1 percent of the predicted fear mongering by the CDC last year, so to cover themselves they lower the prediction. They are merely a sales instrument for Big Pharma.The amount of bovine excrement spewed out by the CDC is truly stunning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/30/flu-deaths-continue-to-rise
People are still dying from flu in the UK.
Just saying.
The problem with H1N1 is that it kills pregnant women. If you are pregnant, or have asthma, you'd better get the shot. The H1N1 is not like the usual influenza that kills the elderly.
In our area, H1N1 was MUCH more mild than the seasonal flu strain. I think the hype was ridiculous.
I have seen 100+ cases of flu in our office over the past 3 weeks. I've had only 2 out of that 100 that were H1N1, all the rest have been the regular seasonal strain (influenza B).
Only one person that swabbed positive HAD received their flu shot. The other 99 or so chose not to be vaccinated. The two that were admitted last week did not get their vaccine this year.
it's intriguing to me how some people seem to get colds and flu at least yearly, while others don't. ----- maybe our health "experts" need to do a study of the healthy people, and discover the secret.
We called off Christmas with our family b/c I had bronchitis. Am still sick after 9 days and have taken a round of Z-pak and a steriods for the swelling in my brochicial tubes. Feel like dirt, coughing so much feels like sometime I am going to cough up a lung. Time will tell if I need more antiobiotics according to the doc. Midwest getting hit hard by stomach and vomiting too. Have had that too. Not a fun holiday. Hopefully next year will be better.
Thats exactly what I had....took 2 weeks to recover (got the same meds as well with an inhaler too). Good luck!!
Maybe your symptoms are viral, since the antibiotics did not work. Or maybe pertussis?? There's a reason why they call it the "hundred day cough"... Whooping cough affects many adults every year.
Bruce - Sorry, but don't misquote me. I did NOT say don't get the shot - in fact, I think the vaccine is important for everybody, not only to protect themselves, but also to help protect the vulnerable people around them via herd immunity (there are people in every community who cannot, for various reasons, safely be vaccinated. Those people depend on others to help keep the flu away from them). What I DID say was that healthy people do not need antiviral medication treatment if they do catch the flu.
Clearly, as for all diseases, prevention is better than getting sick in the first place. When it comes to preventing the flu, vaccination is the single best step one can take to prevent contracting the disease. That, and "wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands." And when you're done washing your hands....wash them again!
Forget sniffles, my whole neighborhood has been hit with a stomach virus that leaves you w/projectile vomiting for two days. Ugh, haven't heard anything on that in the news though its big in Loudoun County and I've heard lots of folks up in Frederick, MD are dealing with it as well. That's even WORSE than that puny sniffles thing!
Have to agree with you there Mid-Atlantic-Mom! I'd much rather deal with sniffles than projectile vomiting any day.
My co-workers came into the office sick instead of staying home like they should have. I washed my hands and sprayed lysol everywhere like I had "OCD". They spread it and I came down with a virus (cold) just in time for the holiday. The vacation/holiday time I planned to enjoy was spent staying home sick in bed.
STAY HOME IF YOU ARE SICK AND DON'T GO TO WORK AND SPREAD IT TO OTHERS.
Employee motto....Why waste a perfectly good sick day staying home. Better to go to work and infect everyone around you and save that sick day for a time when you want to hit the beach. Amazing how sick days are timed to fall on a Friday or Monday!
Sarah Palin would have prevented this. Obama for the FAIL.
SARCASM.
As a nurse practitioner I wholeheartedly agree with codoc's opinion. Also, please do not demand antibiotic for colds, coughs, bronchitis, etc. These are viral illnesses and antibiotics will not cure them. Antibiotics are not benign medications--many side effects are associated with them. Overuse leads to antibiotic resistance. If you are sick, stay home, drink lots of fluids, rest, hand washing, chicken noodle soup, etc.
Forget about staying home if you work in food service, you'll be fired. The only hope I see for the restaurant business is labor unions, perhaps with unionization the working conditions would improve and employees would actually get sick leave, or at least not be fired for calling in sick. Of course the price would go up, but wouldn't you as a customer, rather be secure in knowing that your waitress isn't stopping off at the bathroom intermittantly with diarrhea? Yes that's illegal, but widespread.
Restaurants regularly make their employees work sick, they threaten to fire them if they call in sick, even once, and they don't pay sick leave, so sick workers miss checks if they don't work. Even the very high class places do this, perhaps more so because the pay is better. So there really is no point trying to wash your hands if you are eating out when the wait staff and the cooks are all coughing on the food. I suppose you could look at this problem as the revenge of the underemployed against the overpaid.
I work in a restaurant, and contagiousness is indeed a problem. Where I work the threats of firing aren't a problem, but getting enough work hours to make ends meet is. Sometimes the employees call in sick for a few days until they feel functional again, but there is sometimes the question of "am I still contagious?"
I get the feeling sometimes that employees and employers alike tend to skirt the issue, because paychecks are too small and help at the restaurants is often too short, and the patrons can be very demanding to the point that many of them aren't all that concerned about catching something from the restaurant. They just seem to take the position that everyone is going to catch it sooner or later anyway, because we all live in a small town. With an attitude like that, I often worry about infants and the elderly.
Everyone should get the flu shot. You are not made stronger by having the flu and the post -flu lethargy can impact your life. Flu can kill you, so why not get protected so you will be around next Xmas.
Everyone should get the flu shot. You are not made stronger by having the flu and the post -flu lethargy can impact your life. Flu can kill you, so why not get protected so you will be around next Xmas.
No thanks..I will take my chances
I have a food allergy to eggs - many vaccines, especially FLU and H1N1 are incubated in eggs. each year i ask and each year they tell me i still cant take it.
Many allergists will still given their egg-allergy patients flu shots -- sometimes just by dividing it into smaller doses. I know the children in our city can still have flu shots per the allergists' recommendations.
I've been sick for a month now. I start to get better, go to work and get ever sicker. I go to work because we don't have sick days, are not paid if we don't go, and the pressure is enormous to show up even when deathly ill because there is so little help. Yep, it's retail. I finally got some meds from the Doc and called and said I won't be in until I'm well. It is insane to work in an environment like that, but it is a job, and in today's economy that says a lot. But I still feel...I just said this morning that I feel like a character from Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle". If I die on the sales floor, they'll throw me in the meat grinder and take the next schmuck in line to do my job.
Rotfl..oh the joys of retail! Feel better soon
I did the flu shot thing this year and for the first time in five or six years I had an upper respiratory infection and had to get antibiotics. Go figure.
Precisely why I don't "go there"
I hate to say it but schools are just as bad as offices. My stepson's school kept telling me to send him to school even though he had a fever because they needed their attendance money. I use the 24 hour fever free rule...no fever for 24 hours straight or stay home. My husband has a co-worker who thought he was "tough" for coming into work when he had pneumonia. Everyone in the office got sick plus my husband and his other co-workers brought it home to all their families. Stay home when you are sick AND rest! Wash your hands and drink lots of water. Keep your germs to yourself!
Yup. Last year, my son missed more than 5 days of school, and we got a Nasty-gram from the truancy officer. He had a bout of swine flu because the vaccine wasn't available here until after about a third of the elementary school kids had swine flu. Then he got strep throat and an ear infection with a temp of 103. His absences were excused by our family physician. But apparently I was being neglectful by keeping him home.
This is great advice! I hope employers read this as well. I know someone who does nails at a local salon was really pressured to come to work even though she is sick and running a fever! Can you believe that an employer would pressure an employee to come to work and sit in such close proximity to clients while they are contagious?
It's your life you are risking! ( plus the lives of your friends, relatives,co-workers,and those with weak immune systems) . The real flu is not the sniffles and a sore throat. When it hits it is sudden, with severe muscle aches and fever. Patients of mine who got the real flu (and not a cold) always got the vaccine the next year. Some people have to learn through personal experience and those that die don't talk. (Darwin had it right!)