Winter bugs are out of control these days, aren't they?

[RogGestYeGerryMentlemen]

What on earth is going on? Primary schools local to me have had to close due to the d&v bug making the rounds. In one school, almost three quarters of students were absent. People seem to be catching it just by looking at each other, and it seems to be a particularly severe one, with people getting dehydrated as they are vomiting constantly and are unable to keep anything down.

I don't remember anything like this when I was a child. Yes you would get a bug doing the rounds, but you'd have a few years of catching everything when you started school, then it would ease off by age 8 or so.... I didn't catch a vomiting bug from I was 8 until I was about 15! Not to say I wasn't off sick for other reasons, but these vomiting bugs weren't the inevitable yearly event they are now.

My mum was a nurse for years, she reckons it's using antibac/disinfectant over soap and water - she says when she started her nursing training, they would obviously disinfectant certain things, but everything else would be given a good regular scrub down with soap and roasting hot water, and they had a massive barrel of rock salt which they'd scoop out and put in patient's baths, and she said wound infections weren't anything like now, and MRSA was unheard of.

I've actually changed this summer from antibac sprays to the more old fashioned cleaners like Stardrops and Vim, and bar soap instead of the dettol stuff, and touch wood we haven't had anything yet

I'm also in NI OP, I've been shocked at how hard the DV bug has hit.

You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t really aren’t you. Attendance records means they must be in for a certain % of the year. D&V and other hotch potch of stuff that kids can get and you get an officious letter. Very small minority of schools being closed for a deep clean (whatever that actually means in practice) in reality though. Seems a bit histrionic.

@laurabradshaw - you're insane.

Foot & Mouth was caused by a cunt breaking the laws on livestock health and movement. And then most likely somebody being a bit slapdash at the biological research facility the next time round.

Malaria still isn't a thing here, but if somebody goes on holiday without taking malarial prophylaxis and gets infected by a mosquito, then they are going to bring it back with them. Anthropogenic Climate Change may mean that the particular species of mosquito that can carry the parasite would be able to survive over here, particularly with increased rainfall. Malaria used to be endemic in the UK, by the way, but we drained a lot of marshland and suchlike as our population grew over the centuries, thus taking away the stagnant water they use to breed in. Water treatment also reduced diseases by getting rid of cesspits, polluted waters, etc.

HIV and AIDS was originally mostly spread through same sex relations and/or intravenous drug use, combined with the likely consequence for some drug users entering prostitution to fund their addictions. It's likely that the virus was first transmitted widely/away from its origins by white people working for the UN using sex workers/abusing the desperately poor women they were supposed to be protecting/helping and then going on to repeat the same behaviour in other poor countries.

Animals from certain countries are permitted to cross borders with evidence of Rabies vaccination and what is normally termed a Pet Passport - one glitch in the paperwork and they're in quarantine as usual. It's been done with racehorses for a lot longer than the last twenty years.

Pity there's no quarantine for morons bleating on about Africans.

@Troels Schools seriously don't get kids to wash their hands before lunchtime anymore?!! I'm shocked. My DC is only in reception but I'll have to ask them about this in the morning. That's a sure-fire way of spreading infections !

OMG - we eradicated AIDs years ago, but due to lax hygiene it’s come back and that’s Tony Blair’s fault? Erm, sorry WTF!

On the other hand, there’s loads of schools closed in Yorkshire and everyone is dropping like flies. I think we’re just out the other side, with a malingering night time cough and a bit of fatigue left. I was thinking of painting a cross on the door at one point.

It’s starting to get cold, hopefully a good freeze will help halt the bugs.

Also in ni op and a teacher - maybe if parents actually kept kids off for the 48 hours it would stop spreading.
My entire class has had it and it appears to have just started round number 2. My whole house has had it.

@Turniptracker

I sympathise. I wash hands all the time at work, go round disinfecting door handles etc because the cleaners don’t, use the Stop colds spray you get in Boots, and take allicin.

It’s not cold proof but I’m definitely better than I was.

Famous last words but we haven't had a vomiting bug for years. My eldest is an emetephobe (sp?) so he washes his hands religiously and the younger one follows suit.
Now that I've said that I'm going to stock up on toilet rolls

I'm in Scotland and there are a few things doing the rounds here. Lots of sick bugs and some actual proper flu.
2/3 of my DCs have been off in the last 3 weeks.

It really is the 'Oh, it's something Tabitha ate' lying disorder. The Lie parents tell themselves, then tell everyone else. People won't stay home with their kids and allow them to recover and they really don't give a damn about passing it around. It's that simple.
I've been with parents in the park after school, received a text later that evening asking if my child has been sick because 'Thomas' has vomited 4 times since coming home from the park. But guess what? He's at school the next day, looking like a train wreck, but there's no way mum and dad will take off work to allow the poor kid to recover and NOT infect everyone else.

Weve got big problems here in the NE too.

Antibacterial gels and stuff dont kill the norovirus that is doing the rounds near us.
Good old soap, warm water and a good scrub clean are the best hand cleaning methods, but aren't fashionable

Although I'm still scratching my head at the news article that suggested to prevent further noro spread, we should all make sure we have our flu vaccinations...

Schools don’t insist on hand washing as it takes a lot of time.

I’d also agree that air travel spreads disease - not immigrants - as such but plenty of people trace round the world for work or holidays and bring new things back and spread viruses.

How else did bird flu spread?

I do highly recommend Sterizar this time of year. It kills norovirus. I believe it is the only commercial spray available to consumers that does this.
We are a soap (bar) and water family. No anti-bac soaps, sprays or wipes or even bleach. BUT when there's noro going around, I get out my bottle of Sterizar and spray the remote, doorknobs, surfaces, anything and everything we handle. I hot water and bleach the railings. And we wash our hands a lot more. All I have to say to the kids is, 'There's a stomach flu going. Wash your hands!' and they don't hang about.
I even mist the school bags with sterizar, coats too, if I hear that little Jemima puked all over the class guinea pig. I have to say, we haven't had the stomach flu in 2 1/2 years (which is a miracle for us). That's when I began using Sterizar in the house. Probably coincidental. But you never know.

I work in a school, we have the sickness bug going round. I think parents are more worried about absences now so send children back early and a lack of cleaners means my school is incredibly dirty. Someone was sick on the floor before the October half term and it was still on the floor when we got back, just covered in the powder. It's awful.

I genuinely think working parents & Ofstead targets have a lot to do vs when we were at school
Before- you were ill- off school with nearly always a parent until better, then back
Now- likely both parents working, school grumbling about attendance, paying for nursery not being used etc
The lack of support for parental choice atm is an epidemic
I met with old friends recently, all 40. All in different areas of work and lifestyle- kids broadly same age. All of us totally and utterly worn to the ground mentally and physically trying to keep wheels on. Never had so much been expected of parents with less support and resource

Dsis is a teacher and said that in her class of 28 she had 18 off with one illness or another.

She however got d and v and was in school the next day. Apprently according to her head the 48 hour rule doesn’t apply to teachers. Which is bollocks.

@RainbowMum11 we have the same two viruses doing the rounds here. 70 kids off last week from DS1's village primary school, extra cleaning at school, a letter from Public Health England. DS2 has had the flu-like virus. I am praying no-one gets the D&V bug.

Bugs are spreading like wildfire around schools because children are sent to school unwell as parents have to get to work.
Also children have had a lot of "indoor play" in school due to the wet weather and so are in close contact with each other all day.
We have had so many children come to school ill this past week and parents often can't be reached for hours so they can't be sent home.

We have a winter vomiting/tummyache one, a rotten cold with sore throat, influenza (because parent choice, obvs), a massively spiking fever one (normal to 40C within twenty minutes, cue the call home) and rumours of Scarlet Fever knocking around the area.

It's frankly, quite shit when you have more jobs to do in a day than just deal with 'My tummy hurts/I feel sick', the ones who walk in looking like Death on a Stick and the usual slips, trips, bumps and nosebleeds. And then a parent complains that you've called them to pick up their kid and you're making such a fuss about nothing. And that they threw up three times last night, so the least you could do is look after them for the next six hours, as though you're sat there reading a book whilst theirs is the only child who is unwell all day.

The skin on my hands is like parchment now with all the constant washing, hot water and antibacterial gel I have to do.

@ChaiNashta No it seems to be optional and only if a kid insists, they get herded into the diningroom.
The school near where I grew up had a row of sinks 8 or 10 of them, in the cloakroom area, the dinnerladies would half fill all the sinks with hot water, then send two at a time to each sink and monitor washing, then another at the end made sure everyone was dried off, took all of 20 minutes. This was for reception class, the older ones followed on and did it themsleves with one dinnerlady monitoring while the other one settled the little ones in the diningroom. So sensible,
Dd's School had two sinks in each bathroom so no way could they get through so many kids in 20 minutes. Poor planning without hygeine in as a thought at all.

DDs secondary school sent a reminder about taking 48h off after a sickness bug on Thursday. Too bloody late for us, we had 3 people in the family poorly the first half of the week.

The thing about norovirus is that it mutates all the time, so if you catch it you’re only immune to that particular strain, and only for a few months. I researched it a while ago and it only started to become a problem in the 90s and has got worse and worse since then, although if you view the statistics, it’s been at least 5 years since the last bout of this scale. So when we were kids, get here were tummy bugs but mainly not of the norovirus type, so they didn’t spread as easily (norovirus is a bastard and spreads like mad).

Reasons for spreading:

1. Not enough people know that only bleach or the couple of cleaning fluids mentioned kill it. Cleaning up vom with Dettol or another antibac is like cleaning it up with water. Bleach all the way.

1. Lots of people (and schools) don’t clean the surrounding areas when someone’s been sick or had diarrhoea. It spreads in tiny droplets, do surrounding walls, doors, floor, door handles etc need to be cleaned too plus towels changed and boil washed.

1. Parents don’t follow the 48 hour rule if they think they can get away with it. This should also apply to going anywhere, not just school. The amount of people I heard saying they’re taking their kid to soft play as they’re off school because of the 48 hour rule is insane. FFS how selfish is that?

I’m not sure about gut flora and whether this plays a part. It definitely does play a part in general immunity to colds and flu, but because of the way norovirus mutates and behaves, it does seem that anyone can catch it because you cannot be immune to it unless you have a certain blood type (I forget which blood type it is, but it’s a pretty rare one).

I make DS wash his hands when he gets in from anywhere and before eating anything, but it he reuse I try not to be too mad with hygiene unless a stomach bug is doing the rounds. He does seem to be particularly prone to vom bugs though which is unfortunate for me (see my user name which I changed to yesterday to post a related thread).

I think more families have 2 working parents than when we were kids and less local child care in the form of granny or auntie to call upon. This means children sent back to school before the 48h rule which just spreads the bug, especially when children actually vomit at school.

I don't remember what hygiene was like at schools when we were young but the hygiene in my children's school leaves a lot to be desired.

I agree that it is a combination of:

1. Attendance pressures at school
2. Sending children back to school too early
3. Not enough hand washing
4. People mistakenly believing that anti bac gel is better than hand washing

I am in Yorkshire, where norovirus is doing the rounds which has resulted in school closures. There are adverts advising people not to use anti bac gel and to use soap and water instead.

I’m sure i read a theory somewhere that catching norovirus depends on your blood type. Some blood types are more susceptible to certain viruses. I definetly read it online but maybe not in a medical journal....