Fed up of hearing about the flu

I think starmer would love to have his pandemic moment and an excuse to lock us all up.

To be fair it’s 2025. If you can use Mumsnet you could use the NHS app.

I'm eligible for a vaccine and used to get one every year when the GP would send out a letter announcing dates of a drive through clinic.

Then they stopped doing the drive through clinic, stopped sending letters, and sent messages through an app that I dont have (or so said the receptionist when I asked last year). This year they sent a letter telling me I could organise a free jab at the pharmacy or my GP. I gave up after the second pharmacy saying they didnt have any available, took days to actually get a GP receptionist on the phone and she told me to check more pharmacies...

So I just stopped bothering.

Because the thick buggers seem to think it's a government conspiracy and that virusus don't exist and it's just your body doing a winter detox, so the uptake is pathetic.

Personally I think people who have that attitude shouldn't bother doctors when they get it. They can 'detox" at home.

To be fair the mass hysteria in the news doesn’t help. People will panic and head to a&e the second they think they’ve got the flu.

I don’t understand how your stroppy demands for information relate to my post.

And then not bothered returning to the thread!

I had to take my elderly mum to a hospital appointment today at a v busy, central London hospital. It’s a fairly regular appointment (we’ve been to this clinic 4-5 times in 2025). The route we walk takes us past the A&E entrance. It’s possible to see the ambulance off loading point as well.

I have never seen and heard so many ambulances arriving/ waiting to unload. Whatever is happening, it’s bad. Really bad.

I made sure that mum and I were wearing face masks, so many people were coughing and spluttering all over the place.

They have literally said the vaccine doesn’t cover this strain…

Funny as I expect this was all Covid was and they made such a fu*king song and dance about it to terrify everyone! Oh and have admitted the vaccine doesn’t cover this strain… why would anyone have it then?!

Foredgyhare
sorry about your mum.
its so hard isn’t it.
Take care

'Most people' don't get it, no. Uptake of the flu vaccine is extremely low - some of the higher risk groups are only seeing around 30% uptake. Hence the media push.

And yes, it works as well as it's supposed to. Obviously it would work better if more people had it. Why do you think it doesn't work well?

I'm so sorry for your loss. X

Bacterial surge?
Then the main reason for death wasn't flu, more likely pneumonia.
I've never been vaccinated, had something horrible, couldn't stand up as a PP pointed out - and in three weeks I was back to moderately heavy physical work.

It’s bloody everywhere around here. It’s gone through all the family, most of the classes in school. Kids haven’t had it too badly (had nasal spray in school a few weeks ago) but it’s pretty unpleasant. It’s all you can hear out and about and on Teams calls. It’s particularly noticeable this year

I love that OP has deliberately started a thread about the flu, and told us her experience of it, and then said that she's fed up hearing about it. Seems counterintuitive 🤣

Any other year the flu news would have passed me by. But my mum died in a hospice on Friday. She had caught flu (type A) and developed pneumonia. The hospital were going to move her when she was on end of life care to a normal ward due to needing to turn normal wards into flu wards and they needed to use the single rooms for none flu male patients. The rates of flu in females is massive and they had no room to allow my mum to die unless we moved her to a multiple occupancy ward. We were “lucky” that our local hospice had a bed for her. The cause of death on her certificate even says influenza A.

It’s not making me anxious because I WFH and had the vaccine weeks ago. I’ve got a weakened version of flu which is bad enough. I think people should be worried about elderly and immunocompromised people getting this strain of flu, though. 1 in 10 hospital beds contains a flu patient today and it hasn’t peaked yet.

Gosh, that's so original! Calling it The Daily Fail.

Exactly. Flu is highly problematic in a number of ways, not least because it can also present in some people as very mild, and others will be asymptomatic. Whether a person has a severe case or is on the other end of the spectrum and asymptomatic, the risk of passing the virus onto others remains, and the next person might not be so lucky with an asymptomatic case, even if the person who passed it to them was.

It is a bit of a lottery - none of us know how unwell we may become with flu, and we certainly can't know how ill we may inadvertently make someone else should we pass it on to them, and the chain continues - maybe they live with someone undergoing chemo. The consequences at the end of that chain could be truly diabolical.

What we do know is that whilst vaccines NEVER guarantee 100% protection from flu, those of us who are vaccinated will be less ill than we would have been had we not been vaccinated, and we are less likely to be hospitalised and die (or have a limb amputated). I wrote a lengthier post, I think it's on page 2, so I won't repeat more here, but it's there if it may be of interest. Incidentally, the same applies to the COVID-19 vaccinations.

Pharmaceuticals are obviously experiencing a lower amount of patronage compared to covid times so we're being reminded to get jabbed to be kind. Also, be kind to the NHS, they've been taken unaware by the flu.
As someone said of another lady in the gym behind her back this morning, "she's the reason why people get the flu." She's said she didn't believe in the flu jab. Jab away!

Considering my kids have only just had their vaccines at school this week and countless of their classmates have been off with flu already this season, I don’t understand why they’ve chosen to vaccinate so late in the year this year?

Not RTFT so if this has already been explained I apologise but I’m sure they’ve never been vaccinated this late!

And you are of no authority to me or anyone else on here. See how that works? And stop winding people up.

This is very true

it's not Covid, they are testing people in hospital and the vast majority come back as H3N2 subklade K. Why on earth would anyone want to pretend it was Covid when it is a strain of flu?