"It's just a virus"

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I hear this a lot from friends who have taken their kids to the GP with symptoms like high temp, streaming cold, streaming eyes, cough, sore throat, bad cold symptoms basically.

DS1 has all these symptoms and has had high temp on and off for two days so am taking him to the doc tomorrow just to rule out tonsillitis say that needs anti-biotics.

I'm just expecting a "it's a virus, there's lots of it going around, keep taking calpol etc"

What does this even mean? Does it just mean nasty cold?

I have heard that all to often with my kids only the other week took her to the docs on Friday and they said she has a virus and by Sunday was at the hospital cuz her temp was 40 and they said she had tonsillitis. But u have heard it is very normal for young kids to get between 6-13 virus just in the winter period

I said the same to my DP when he told me someone at work had the flu and he thought he'd caught it. If you have the flu you are not going to be at work, you're lucky if you can get out of bed. So it was 'just a virus' i.e. nothing serious, albeit uncomfortable and requiring of ibuprofen, Strepsils and cuddles.

If a doctor says it, I imagine the subtext is "it's not bacterial, therefore antibiotics won't have any effect on it, so don't even ask"

In fact doc said "don't know if it's vital or bacterial.." So got antibiotics to rule out bacterial.

I agree re flu. My DP refers to a bad cold as "the flu". Drives me potty....! Erm the flu actually kills people. Man up....

When something is viral it just means it can't be treated with antibiotics and therefore treatment is harder and generally involves "sitting it out"

It is no indicator as to the severity of the illness though.

"Just" a virus nearly killed DS. The fact it was a virus meant that all that could be done was controlling the symptoms rather than treating it.

And of course while defences are weakened by a virus then a secondary infection can develop (sometimes bacterial and therefore treatable)