Can we please stop spreading the same tired old myths about flu?

[AutisticAndMore]

The ones about not being able to get out of bed if there was a £50 note on the floor and talk of “real flu”.

Flu can be asymptomatic, mild, moderate or severe. It’s still “real flu” regardless of severity.

It’s a tiresome and potentially dangerous myth that it always has to be severe. And no you might not know for definite that you have flu unless you test for it/are tested but you don’t have to be confined to your bed to have flu.

https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/yahoo-life-why-does-the-flu-make-some-people-sick-but-not-others

Agree!
Ive had flu a few times in my life and it made me feel like total shit but I was still able to get out of bed to pee etc. I know the difference between a bad cold and actual flu.
I do remember once when I was a kid that someone had left the landing light on, I saw it and thought it was flickering because the house was on fire and felt too ill to get up and tell anyone, but I was also probably half asleep.

I suppose the question is, what do we do about it?

👏👏👏

Thank you for saying what I can never be arsed to say. I just go all itchy and keep quiet.

Stop spreading the same tired old myths and be aware that that seemingly bog standard cold could also be flu. And that perhaps visiting a loved one in hospital(Unless in exceptional circumstances) or seeing a vulnerable friend should wait even if you think it’s just a cold.

Yes agree with that. X

I've never knowingly had flu, but as I'm in my 50s, it's unlikely I never have. I've had bad colds at times, and I've never been tested to know if it's flu or a rhinovirus or coronavirus or something else. (I remember reading about some tropicsl diseases before I went travelling, and most of them start with, "flu-like symptoms", with sometimes the addition of a rash.) But I have a good immune system - when I had glandular fever at the same time as a couple of friends, I had it far milder than either of them did. So for all I know, I might have been out and about spreading germs when I just didn't know because I didn't feel unwell.

If flu has such ambiguous symptoms ranging from 'like a mild cold' to hospitalisation - how the hell does anyone ever know if they have flu if they have the lower end range of symptoms?

Therefore, I would say flu is when you are aching all over for more than 3 days, bedridden or hospitalised - everything else is a cold or a bad cold.

Mil loves wheeling out that £50 note thing (apropos of nothing) and it doesn't matter how many times I tell her that the flu virus can present along a spectrum of extremely severe and debilitating all the way to mild and even asymptomatic, she never accepts it. I avoid threads on here that mention the flu because it's so irritating to read all the 'if you had REAL flu you couldn't type a message on mumnset' bollocks.

Don't know if this is true for everyone but in my experience:

Flu - comes on quickly
Cold - gradually develops over a few days
Flu - always have high temperature
Cold - don't always have high temperature
Flu - lose appetite
Cold - can still eat although often lose sense of smell/taste
Flu - lasts longer but recover suddenly
Cold - can drag on for weeks of still coughing and feeling bunged up

Both colds and flu can make me feel too ill to move, but that phase lasts longer with flu.

They don’t. But flu is a specific virus (or family of viruses), it’s not defined by severity, so you can’t just say “anything less than that is a cold”.

One of my team is currently struggling and has been since this time last week, She was fine last Tuesday lunchtime, starting coughing in a meeting later that afternoon and by Wednesday she sounded awful. She came back to work today (wfh) I spoke to her at 11 and told her to get back to bed.

It's almost certainly flu given how quickly she became ill, and along with all her other symptoms.

But yes, I agree people can have flu and be reasonably well (only found out DD had flu because of a test - she was in hospital for something entirely different and not related to flu). So many factors come into play with viruses.

If I’m going to see a vulnerable person during flu season I spend a few quid on a rapid test that shows covid, influenza a&b and whatever else is available.

Yes but virtually no child or healthy adult with a 'mild' flu would be tested so they will always just think it's a bad cold.

There is clearly no obvious way to tell.

We can't keep all our kids off school or stay off work every time we have a bad cold. It may well be flu - we will never know.

It really doesn’t matter what “you would say” 🤣 because flu is a medical term, not some arbitrary benchmark of severity determined by a random MNer. Either your illness - mild or otherwise - is caused by the influenza virus, or it isn’t.

Indeed.

@ticktickticktickBOOM is free to describe any random untested illness as flu if she wishes, but it won't stop it from being complete bollocks. You know you've got flu because you've tested positive for it, not because your symptoms are at a certain severity threshold.

Well it does because the OP 's opening posts is asking people to stop calling a mild flu 'a cold'. No-one can do that without a test.

We will continue to think we have a cold and call it a cold. No-one is going to a doctors for a flu test if they think they have a cold.

So the medical definition is redundant when it comes to people going about their daily lives.

Agreed. But I don’t think anyone is advocating that all children with even the mildest of colds be kept off school.

No I agree that people can’t afford to stay off work every time. I’d just like people to stop spreading the £50 note myth and to keep it in mind if they are visiting someone who is medically vulnerable.

I don't visit someone medically vulnerable if I have a cold anyway - or any contagious illness for that matter - even if mild.

Nurses, are workers and community workers have to though.

There's no stopping it really.

But at the same time, a bad cold can be more or as debilitating as real flu.

My last cold I had half a day off because I was woozy with a headache and couldn't think my way out of a paper bag.

No you can’t avoid all transmission but visits from nurses and carers are essential. Some people do visit vulnerable loved ones when they think they have a cold but they may not do so until they recover if they are aware that it could potentially be flu.

How do you know that you haven’t had it more than 3 times, but the other times were mild?

"And I realised that they had a point - I knew I had a virus and there was no reason it couldn't be flu"

By this logic, you could argue it couldn't be a form ebola!

I wouldn't see anyone in hospital if I was at all unwell even with a cold. Neither would I test for mild anything. My kids one by one came down with a really nasty bug I thought was covid. I had one rapid test so used that. Buy I just wouldn't test for flu. If I thought I had flu I'd be very ill in bed. If I thought I had a mild cold I'd crack on with life. Because some years I have had a cold most months.

Nah, I think it will be fairly clear if you have some sort of haemorrhagic virus.