To think that if you let your kids....

[LemonSherbetFancies]

Swim/play in the river, you should not be surprised if they come down with a flu/cold the next day?

I was staying in a 'cottage' (shack) with a gang of mates once and we had no running water - we brushed our teeth and washed in the stream - until the last day when we discovered a dead sheep further up stream

no one died though

or cot the flu

I can’t help wondering whether the OP is from a non U.K. background. When we lived among a largely Mediterranean-culture community in the Middle East, so many of the mothers were obsessed with the idea that e.g. going to the swimming pool would give their children colds. And it was so hot there for much of the year.

Best thread ever.

You can catch some things from rivers
But not flu and the common cold.

It is probably unrelated.

The child needs a coronavirus test.
I don’t think he contracted it from the river.

Swimming in cold water is actually good for your immune system. Plus swimming in open water is one of life's great pleasures - once you've tried it it's hard to go back to a pool!

@LemonSherbetFancies

Neighbours sons went swimming in a river yesterday and today the youngest woke up with a fever and sore throat. Mum was really surprised by it and couldn't work out why he had got ill. Maybe just me but I would have thought it was self explanatory.

Your neighbour is sensible.

You however sound like my MIL who won't allow me to give my kids chocolate milkshakes because they'll cause diahorrea. No vests or getting rained on or going outside wet means the kids will catch a cold. Milk being drank on a hot day will curdle in the tummies and make them ill, and kids shouldn't drink milk and orange juice within a short amount of time.

@viques

Walliams, thank you speck check, I know what I am writing.

speck check

It did that on purpose didn’t it? Things are getting ridiculous when the machines take petty revenge on a person who calls them out in a moment of irritation.

So, damn your sneaky vengeful eyes spell check. You aren’t in control of me, yet.

😂

😂😂

@LemonSherbetFancies

They are not the cleanest of places though are they?

Depends which part of which river

My kids have swum / played in many lovely safe rivers.

I wouldn’t let them swim in an urban / industrial river, for example, for fear of chemical contamination, fungal or skin conditions or gastro bugs and general filth.

Possibly Weils disease.

@wildeverose

Your child can get bacteria or an infection from A dirty river or stream. You absolutely can't get Cold or flu from a river

This. You can get Weil’s disease or an ear infection; not a cold or flu.

The boy needs a PCR test.

If he has COVID symptoms this morning he will have been infected earlier than yesterday afternoon.

However fever and sore throat could maybe be a non-cold or flu illness and might be connected with river swim, depending on what it is.

Sore throat / fever are symptoms of Delta variant Covid which presumably was caught at school last week. The child needs to isolate and get a test.

Worse things than flu/cold can be caught in the river. Rat urine if swallowed can be very serious. Google Wiel's disease

Yeah you're right OP - she's such a thick shit mother, bet her kids eyes are square too from sitting too close to the telly

I live rurally, near clean rivers (about as clean as you can get in England). We take our kids wild swimming/paddling in the river regularly in the summer - it's 15miles to the nearest pool.

I would be less surprised by a stomach bug tbh. A fever and sore throat could be symptoms of many things and I would probably put it down to something caught from the river (in the absence of another obvious cause)

Not a cold or flu www.winchesterhospital.org/health-library/article?id=156976

Maybe something else from the water if it wasn't clean.

V&D yes. Cold or flu no.

There is evidence to suggest that exposure to cold can suppress your immune system, making you a little more vulnerable to infection. Obviously, the virus wasn't caught from the river, but the lad may have been more susceptible to infection from whichever source as a result of being very cold.

Reminds me of my dad telling me why Cornwall didn't have a huge amount of covid cases.

Apparently it's all to do with the "sea air" killing the virus.

I understand about colds/virus’ etc but we go to the beach regularly in the winter where my kids swim in the freezing sea and 1-2 days later they usually have a cough and a cold!

I remember in my uni days many moons ago we did a practical involving lake water. We were specifically warned that if we came down with flu-like symptoms in the next week we should tell our GP we could have Weil's disease.

But swimming in rivers does not give you actual colds or flu. If they've got cold/flu/covid they got it from an infected human.

You could catch something grim if sewage was discharged into the river that would probably make you feel like death warmed up.