How do you know if what you have is swine flu or 'normal' flu?

[MonstrousMerryHenry]

The symptoms are more or less the same, aren't they? It's not like all the normal flu bugs have assessed the situation and gone: 'Damn! There's a hip new cat in town and he's bigger and badder than us, let's scram!' Other illnesses still exist while SF is around, right?

So unless the NHS starts actually spending its money in useful ways by introducing measures such as cheek swabs like they do in other countries (the USA, I believe, is one such country - how embarassing that they're doing healthcare better than us) they actually have absolutely no idea how bad the pandemic is, and are going round jabbing people unnecessarily in some (or many) instances.

I am so over this swine flu malarkey.

bumpety bump

don't think you can really tell tbh and I agree with you that unless they're going to do swabs to prove it's swine flu, I'm not keen on giving my children drugs for maybe-swine-flu.
my dcs have a horrible fluey thing at the moment, temperatures etc but I haven't even thought about it being swine flu as it's SOOOOOo last term.....

My GP said that the way flu is categorised as swine flu or whatever is related to the epidemic at the time. So, in my area there was quite a few cases of SF so when my DS had flu, it "had" to be swine flu according to GP.

It would be normal flu if there are lots of cases of it around.

I know it doesn't address the first few cases! It isn't my reasoning, just what doc told me.

actually there is very little other flu about in Europe and evidence does seem to show that in the Southern hemisphere swine did outcrowd seasonal flu. Goodness knows how that works but it is typical for pandemic flus to replace circulating seasonal flus.

Yes, if you look at the HPA website and weekly report it appears that there is random testing (by certain surgeries) of virus's about at the moment and the vast majoirty are swine flu, with only a few non pandemic flu viruses reported. Please correct me if I am wrong as I am not a doctor! If you have true flu (not man flu or bad cold!) symptoms at the moment (characterised as the high temp, headache, sore throat etc) then its a very high percent chance its swiney.

Ahh, interesting to learn that 'new' flus can actually outcrowd existing flus, I didn't know that.

i think its just that seasonal flu, is only just starting its 'flu' season so to speak and that swiney has an early flu season -or no season- IYSWIM. Figures today show its decreased but thats to be expected due to half term break.

Daughter has just come hoe with the info that one of her teachers has it.