People saying they’ve never had flu?

[Cumbrianlassie]

I find this incredibly strange. I’ve had flu several times in my life and I’m 36, I mean the ‘proper’ flu - body aches, fever, skin pain, headache, cough, no appetite, fatigue for several weeks and weakness.

I had it in January, as did my DS and DP.
Havent had this new strain yet but feels inevitable!

Are some people just immune?

@AllPlayedOut
Ooh I'm sorry if I misunderstood this

I'm just so fed up of this can't walk, too unwell to pick up a £50 note etc nonsense that is constantly spouted about flu. And yes, it does work the other way. Look at the frail elderly who tested positive for Covid in the pandemic and had no symptoms. I can remember posts on here about granny being fine with it whilst clean eating fitness bunnies were laid low. Possibly outliers bit still

I am in my 70s
I think I have had flu 3 times in my life .
it’s very different from a bad cold , chest infection etc .

Had it 3 times. Once as a small child, then two winters in a row in my 20s. I had two big dogs, a lab and GSD. I crawled to the back door to let them out and lay there for a while. Then opened the door to let them in. No dogs. Pulled myself to my feet and saw the garden gate was open and they were clearly long gone. Ordinarily this would have been a disaster. My exact thought on that day was...oh...okay then. I crawled back to the sofa.

Turned out that about a mile away lived a policeman who kept two police dogs. A lab and a GSD. The poor man opened his front door to find a neighbour telling him he'd found his dogs wandering and shoved both my dogs into the house where his two very deeply unimpressed dogs were waiting. Utter carnage ensued apparently...

My mum was one of those (granny with COVID who had no symptoms). But we now think it was a mistake. The test centres were overwhelmed and it's likely there were a lot of errors.

I'm almost 60 and I've never knowingly had flu, but I would say that, wouldn't I? We're all fed this myth that it can't possibly be flu if you can even get out of bed, but there's empirical evidence that you could have antibodies to both swine flu and Covid without ever having had the classic symptoms, so how do I know I haven't had some kind of flu and either had no symptoms at all or symptoms similar to how I experience a cold (which isn't very bad - mostly runny nose)?

All I can say for sure is that I've never had a stereotypical case of flu, and if you don't believe me, there's not much we can do about that.

DH hasn't had flu the whole time I've known him (almost 40 years) but says he had it a couple of times as a kid. My DC might possibly have had it once when they were little. They had the right kind of symptoms and there was a lot of flu around, but the doctor gave them antibiotics for reasons I don't fully understand and wish I had had the presence of mind to ask about at the time.

I had the flu once in my twenties.

It completely floored me, I lost most of two weeks worth of memories (just some fragmented ones of blood pouring down the walls and an evil dwarf under the headboard) and woke up in the hospital.

I've had plenty of bad colds with fever/aches etc. but nothing like that again so far, thankfully.

I am not convinced by the "you have had flu but not noticed" viewpoint, Official sources do not say this. For example this website makes clear that flu is more severe: ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2025/10/08/do-i-have-flu-covid-19-or-a-cold-know-the-signs-and-symptoms/

In any event, you can argue it the other way - if you spend a week in bed and feel grotty for weeks afterwards, it's highly unlikely to have been a common cold and was probably flu - unless you have existing conditions that make a cold much more serious. There are different levels of colds, but you can usually function fine after a day in bed even if you aren't well enough to go to work etc.

I’m mid-fifties and had it once, 29 years ago. It took me a couple of months to recover from it.

https://www.passporthealthusa.com/2022/04/can-the-flu-be-asymptomatic/

As I've said over and over and over again, I've taken part in trials and I've had asymptomatic flu. The trial I took part in found a significant number of us had flu with absolutely zero symptoms.

But there's no point me keep saying this or linking to the research because people simply don't listen and repeat the same myths.