Am I right to be surprised my boss has never heard of Norovirus?

[HangryBrickShark]

He said he'd never heard of it before.

How weird is that?

If he doesn't have kids or elderly relatives, not really!

I hadn't until I had a child in primary school. (I'm degree level educated, if it makes a difference.)

Not especially if he has no real interest in medical stuff, if you said diarrhoea and vomiting he would have known what you mean.

We used to just call it d&v.

How old is your boss?

I keep hearing it referred to as 'neurovirus' so maybe he knows it by a different name? Unless that is another thing, I'm not particularly medically clued up!

Has he actually never heard of it or is he being awkward about someone calling in sick?

What @CruCru said

He would probably just call it a sickness bug or upset stomach

It's only a recent name, I'm not surprised that people wouldnt have heard of it. I dont even know why it's different to other stomach bugs

Another who agrees it’s a recent term. We just used to say stomach problems or sickness and diarrhoea

I only heard of it when my toddler got it and gave it to me. It is embedded on my brain as if imprinted by red hot poker, I was so ill.

I hadn't heard it as a term until I had a child - before then, it was just called a sickness bug.

I hate it when people pronounce it as neurovirus or, as I've heard before, Norah virus.

My American friend hadn't heard of it either

I’ve only heard of it recently. I’d say a stomach bug or gastroenteritis.

I'd never heard of it until I was well into adulthood - it just used to be a tummy bug or sickness and diarrhoea.

I'm 62 and very alert to these things (as an emetophobe!). It started to enter UK etymology in about 2010. It is short for Norwalk Virus, named after a northern city in the States where it was first identified. Nowadays people tend to use it as shorthand for every stomach bug.

I imagine he would have heard of gastroenteritis or stomach flu.

I’ve only ever heard it on here. I wouldn’t call it common parlance. I’ve never had it, and nor have my DC or DH. I’m 59.

On here, every bout of D/V is put down to norovirus, which I tend to think is because it makes things sound more dramatic.
It used to be more commonly called winter vomiting virus amongst other names. Most people probably think of it by other names, or call it gastroenteritis.

I never heard of it until I used Mumsnet. It was just known as a 'bug', 'the shits' or 'D&V'

Stomach flu always sounds a bit made up to me, is that the same thing?

I've only heard about it on Mumsnet. Never heard anyone in RL refer to it.

I've heard of novovirus but until this thread did not realise it was an ongoing thing. I thought it was something people caught In hospital a few years ago and had died out. I agree it's a recent term and in real life most people in my circle use d&v.

Well norovirus is the most likely cause of a stomach bug, statistically speaking.

It's not always horrific, people seem to think that unless you're having exorcist levels of vomiting, it can't be noro, which just isn't true.

As far as someone having never heard of it, I'd assume they didn't pay much attention to the news. Norovirus cases are often in the news, for example this year they're very high, which has been reported in terms of stress on hospitals along with high flu levels.