Ppl who say they've got flu when it's a bloody cold!

[flashz]

I'm I the only one who gets annoyed at this? Flu is debilitating, you can't function at all.
A bloody cold is not the same as flu!

...is this aimed at me...?

Actually flu can be incredibly mild.

Lots of people tested positive during the flu panic years ago, but only had very mild symptoms. They were tested as routine/a side issue, not because they thought they were dying or anything.

If the test hadn't been positive, they'd have thought it was a cold.

Flu isn't always debilitating, like many illnesses there are degrees of severity and a bad cold can be just as shit as having mild flu.

YANBU.

DH is the worst for this. He'll have a dodgy tummy after a take away and will forever be remembered as "that time he had salmonella"

In my mother tongue flu means a common cold and influenza means, well influenza i.e. the flu. So when my friends from back home come over and say they’ve had “the flu” they get the “oh my days, are you ok?!” and love it. 😂

I’m prone to the actual flu and have had it a few times despite getting the flu jab and it is horrible. I must admit it does annoy me a bit when people go “oh god I feel rough with the flu - I could only do a small shop!” and I’m over here thinking when I had the flu I could barely make it to the toilet without passing out. I don’t know why it annoys me though! Probably IABU. 😅

A cold can be debilitating. But if you try to take a day off sick with a cold, you'll be treated as a malingerer, if not by manager, certainly by colleagues, so a new terminology has grown up: cold = sniffles that I can carry on working through, flu = medical flu or a cold that is so severe that I'm not capable of work

I think it depends as well. If you've had the flu very badly, you're less likely to say you've got flu even if it was tested and mild
I got norovirus and when people say "oh I had to run to the toilet about ten times!" I'm like try 200 then come back to me. On day 3 of the norovirus I then got flu so spent 2 weeks in bed between shivering, sweating and hallucinating

I guess it's like anything. Tonsillitis for me is horrendous and barely able to swallow saliva but then some people I know have it and go out partying!

yabu
during swine flu (2009) our family was tested because dc was ill.
dc had 'proper' flu. high fever, breathing problems, achy all over ...
dh just had cold symptoms, snotty nose, sore throat.
I was absolutely fine.
but the test showed we all had swine flu.

I currently have a very bad cold and chest infection, 10 days in and still feeling awful. However it's nothing compared to last year when I had actual flu and pneumonia and couldn't get out of bed for 10 days, closest I've ever felt to death so in general YANBU but I get that people can have either with a broad range of severity. Personally I couldn't even speak, walk or pick up my phone when I was ill with flu so yeah it would probably annoy me if someone with a cold insisted they had flu.

I’m rarely ill but when I do get a cold it has sometimes made me feel as unwell as I have ever felt. I had a completely different sort of illness after my flu jab last year with fever,lethargy and various other symptoms which I presume was actual flu if on the milder end of the spectrum.

YANBU I had proper influenza as a teen and spent 3 weeks off school and ended up in hospital on a drip. Then again I also had very mild symptoms with swine flu, perhaps that pandemic was different in some way? There is also something a bit wimpy about calling in sick because of a cold, even though it can make you feel like utter crap. I’ve used the ‘could be flu’ excuse myself before knowing full well it’s not.

I used to correct my mainly Asian pupils when they told me they had 'a flu'. "You haven't got flu, you've got a cold. If you had flu you wouldn't be well enough to get to school. And it's flu not 'a flu' ".

A few years ago the kids and I got flu. I drove us to the doctor who prescribed us tamiflu. My kids got flu again last year. It really isn't as bad as people make out on MN. The nasal swab is the worst part.

The CDC website:
"Because colds and flu share many symptoms, it can be difficult (or even impossible) to tell the difference between them based on symptoms alone. Special tests that usually must be done within the first few days of illness can tell if a person has the flu."

So the CDC don't agree with you...

I am am cold and shivery, my throat is scratchy, my ankle joined ache and I feel so, so tired.

I am saying I have a cold but it doesn't feel like a strong enough term. I won't use 'flu' for all the reasons above (unlike my Dsis who gets 'flu' about 6 times a year).

Sometimes I just say virus but that feels a bit feeble too...

We need an inbetweeny word.

This thread happens multiple times every autumn. Far more annoying than people who self diagnose flu are:

• people who smugly cite the £50 note test (guess what? It’s meaningless!)
• people who describe how they actually died from flu and their ghost is now typing so please don’t call it flu unless you’re actually dead, because anything less than death and it’s just a cold, you big faker.
• people who refuse to ever acknowledge the multitude of posters who point out that they have been swabbed and confirmed to have flu but were only mildly ill, this proving that flu is not debilitating.
• the complete numbskulls who think that anyone typing words onto a screen does not have flu because they had flu and couldn’t go online, probably due to being dead. Dead of the flu, that illness characterised by immediate and total incapacitation followed immediately by death in all cases.

I've had flu and I've had nasty viruses and they just don't compare. I rarely feel ill with a cold but have been really ill with a virus and unable even to sit up and drink with the flu.