I hear ya, Digit! I did get the Super Duper Senior Flu Shot again this year, but with all the "news" about the flu this year I've been a little bit nervous myself about "leaving the house!" We Olde People are apparently an Endangered Species! Doing all I can to limit the "endangered" part of that term!

LAST winter, again, after having the Super Duper Senior Shot, I DID get the flu! Didn't have any test to say it was "officially" the flu--but it WAS the flu! I was SICK! This year I'm hoping that some of the immunity I got from having had it last year is still working for me!!!

What kind of amazes me this year is that a whole lot of the people who have died have gone to doctors or emergency rooms--and been sent back home! Does that say something about the current state of our "medical care!?!" Truly not trying to start a political discussion here (and won't become involved in it if one does start!), but I just don't get it! If you go to a doctor and they can't even figure out if you're sick enough to need to be "monitored" or something, what's the point of going to a doctor at all--except the doctor gets some $$ out of it! Just my opinion!

Sorry to hear you Got It this year, Digit! Hope you're feeling better again!

Sick people Stay Home!

Skybird

My family got it super early in the season (November) and each of us was lying in bed for a solid two weeks. My daughter had to go on steroids...very scary. It was 3-4 weeks before we felt completely better. Hang in there, Digit! Hope your strain isn't too virulent.

Quarantine Strategies! I'm glad you and your family are better, Faith. Yes, I'm much, much better. It's been about a month since the end of the #2 episode. However, I spent much of December & January koffing and thnnnneeeezin and thnnnnifffiin!

I don't know about any of this infectious stuff. My mother was born in 1919, the first spring following the terrible flu of 1918. (Here's a controversy for you: we called it the Spanish flu for decades but it appears from quite a lot of evidence that American GI's sent to Europe were carrying the flu, to and from.) Anyway, I think that Mom was the only one out of 9 children born in a hospital!

There was enough fear that her mother made it about 50 miles thru the countryside to a hospital. I mean, there were people going to work in the morning and dying on the streets before they could get home (or anywhere else)! Perhaps, this flu as that one could have such very rapid onset of severe symptoms that even the able-bodied could be at immediate risk.

Steve

this is an interesting quote from that article, with information that i caught a glimmering of not very long ago: "the first flu virus you’re exposed to as a child may orient your immune system to respond best to that kind of flu virus. This suggests that people who were exposed to H3N2 as children may mount a better immune response to it ... Before 1968, no one was being exposed to H3N2,"