Another thing that upsets me (and I've seen it a lot!) is when people bring their kids to after school activities like music classes or kids gyms when they're having respiratory infections or other nasty stuff... It's beyond common sense. Let's not panic, but let's not spread illness all around us either whatever it is. If anything the Swine Flu will hopefully change that type of carelessness.
I'm a private tutor and often I get kids coming to me, coughing and spluttering, after being off school all day, but their mums thought they'd 'be OK to go to Penny in the evening'! I keep a box of paperhankies and a packet of baby wipes nearby and any time they sneeze or blow their noses, they have to use both. I also flinch away from them, only partly joking, and tell them I don't want their germs. I mention it to their mums when they come to collect them, too. If they're off sick, I don't get paid for that hour, but if I'm off sick I lose several hours. Also, I hate being ill! I'm planning on being even more vigilant when term starts again...
has anyone here had direct experience of Swine Flu?
my husband has terrible earache, headache, general aches and pains, a cough, and fatigue, plus upset tummy
my son doesn't have the cough and his earache came and went but he has the other symptoms and has been ill since last Friday (8 days ago).
All of us keep going hot and clammy.
Help!
sounds like it ticks the boxes as far as i know. have you rung nhs direct or looked on the website or even rang your local doctor for confirmation. do many people on the islands your way have it?
...although i'm reading lots of stories about misdiagnoses going on. if t'were me, i'd make a docs appt and get it checked in person, although a lot of surgeries don't want folk with suspected s.f. to go there & spread it around.
hope all is ok.
Last edited by cedarblue; Aug 15th, 2009 at 01:17 PM.
Reason: missed out info
For me the symptoms were a slight sore throat for a couple of days, then a sudden really high temperature, with associated aches and pains and headache.
Temperature lasted for about 5 days, gradually subsiding. Sore throat kept threatening to turn into a full blown cough but didn't quite make it. Sticky mucous and yellow bogies, too.
No real problem with my belly. I did seem to crave more high calorie food than usual, though, but that was probably my body requiring more energy to fight the bug.
It did aggravate my seasonal asthma a bit, but the normal blue inhaler worked fine.
Toni had more of a cough, but not so much of a temperature.
Neither of us took tamiflu but we did eat lots of elderberries, blackberries and other fruit, and I reckon it took about 2 weeks from first to last symptoms.
"Danger" could be my middle name … but it's "John"
we've had a few cases here on the isles, Cedar, and it did seem to start a few days after we returned from Glasgow which is a bit of a Swine Flu Hotspot anyway.
Yes, we all have sore throats, too, i forgot to list that!.
The Pandemic helpline is only for people in England so we're going to see how we feel and if we're no better by Monday i will ring my G.P first thing. My son is meant to be starting secondary school on Tuesday! .
My husband wants 'Tamiflu' if he does have it because he's in poor health anyway, but i don't want it if it can be avoided. I've been eating berries from the garden, too, and have bought some more fruit in. We've all been unwell for about 9 or 10 days now, surely it can't go on much longer?. My symptoms are pretty mild but there again i'm mid nervous breakdown so can't feel much anyway .
I went through the online wizard thingy which is supposed to diagnose if you have flu whilst also trying to exclude meningitis or some other serious problem.
Toni phoned the helpline and went through basically the same questions.
Still got a slight tickle in my throat.
Tamiflu probably won't do anything if you've had symptoms for a few days - it needs to be taken very quickly after symptoms appear to have any effect, apparently.
"Danger" could be my middle name … but it's "John"
I'm a private tutor and often I get kids coming to me, coughing and spluttering, after being off school all day, but their mums thought they'd 'be OK to go to Penny in the evening'! .
It's time for them to think about Penny and others who are exposed to whatever they have, not only THEIR family. Seriously, skipping maybe one or two classes is not the end of the world, but it will do wonders for others. And not only do these parents gamble with your health and income, they also put you in a bad spot of maybe having to turn them away.
You might have to put things like that in writing, stating your various policies before a student take lessons with you.... That might be the only way to prevent stuff like this happening to you, unfortunately.... I'm sure they'll still try, but at least you can refer to your policy and you don't have to feel bad if you have to turn them away at the door... Tell them the "Policy" is the boss you don't want to mess with...
In the past when I was babysitting, I had one family have me come in and babysit when all of them had various stages of the flu (I didn't know how serious it was before I got there... it was horrible!). Luckily, I didn't get sick, but I didn't want to continue coming there after that.... I thought it was so selfish. My health obviously didn't matter - the main thing was that THEIR kids had their babysitter at hand to play with... like any other normal day.
"Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends". ~ George Bernhard Shaw.
I hate being ill! I'm planning on being even more vigilant when term starts again...
Oh, well, term hasn't even started yet and I'm ill! I was *very* achy for one day, a couple of days ago, a wee bit better the next, but in the evening developed a very sore throat. I'm sweating like a pig and feeling miserable, with a blocked nose, too. Don't know if it's swine flu or not, though, because I haven't much of a temp. (normal is up a bit for me, but I've only reached 37, I think...)
I'll need to go and lie down again after typing this....
I've only just spotted the latest entries here... Brain fog...
Kriz, I agree wholeheartedly! And how awful about that family getting you in when the kids had flu! Quite apart from your position, which was bad enough, how could they leave their kids when they were all ill? (Earth
Mother coming to the fore, here!)
One of the things that annoys me about getting this, though, is that I eat such good food! Lots of fresh, green leafies from the allotment, fruit, everything that's good for you... My sister says I might be even worse if I didn't, but it's pretty depressing to think that I'm going to catch whatever this is however well I eat...
Hope you feel better soon Penny and anyone else afflicted. To look on the bright(er) side, it may not be a bad idea to catch the flu now (if it's that) and get it over with.
Thanks, Harpy! I thought it might be an idea to get it over early, too, but apparently if it mutates, then you don't have resistence to the new version....... sigh....
''Diseased African Monkeys Used to Make Swine Flu Vaccines; Private Military Contractor Holds Key Patents They're good for you!" say the doctors and drug companies, but they never really talk about what's in those vaccines.
There's a good reason for that: If people knew what was really in those vaccines, they would never allow themselves to be injected with them.
Aside from the dangerous ingredients many people already know about (like squalene or thimerosal), one of the key ingredients used in flu vaccines (including the vaccines being prepared for the swine flu pandemic) is the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys. This is revealed in U.S. patent No. 5911998 - Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line. (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5...)
As this patent readily explains, ingredients used in the vaccine are derived from the kidneys of African Green Monkeys who are first infected with the virus, then allowed to fester the disease, and then are killed so that their diseased organs can be used make vaccine ingredients. This is done in a cruel, inhumane "flesh factory" environment where the monkeys are subjected to a process that includes "incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus." Then: "harvesting the virus resulting from step (c); and... (ii) preparing a vaccine from the harvested virus."
Aside from the outrageous cruelty taking place with all this ("incubating" the virus in the kidneys of living monkeys, for example), there's another disturbing fact that has surfaced in all this: The patent for this process is held not just by the National Institutes of Health, but by another private corporation known as DynCorp.
This, of course, brings up the obvious question: Who is Dyncorp? And why do they hold a patent on live attenuated vaccine production using African Green Monkeys?
What you probably didn't want to know about Dyncorp DynCorp, it turns out, is a one of the top private military contractors working for the U.S. government. In addition to allegedly trafficking in under-age sex slaves in Bosnia (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...) and poisoning rural farmers in Ecuador with its aerial spraying of Colombian coca crops (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...), Dyncorp just happens to be paid big dollars by the U.S. government to patrol the U.S. / Mexico border, near where the H1N1 first swine flu virus was originally detected.
DynCorp also happens to be in a position to receive tremendous financial rewards from its patents covering attenuated live viral vaccine harvesting methods, as described in four key patents jointly held by DynCorp and the National Institutes of Health:
(6025182) Method for producing a virus from an African green monkey kidney cell line
(6117667) Method for producing an adapted virus population from an African green monkey kidney cell line (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6...)
(5911998) Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line
(5646033) African green monkey kidney cell lines useful for maintaining viruses and for preparation of viral vaccines
As this patent readily explains, ingredients used in the vaccine are derived from the kidneys of African Green Monkeys who are first infected with the virus, then allowed to fester the disease, and then are killed so that their diseased organs can be used make vaccine ingredients. This is done in a cruel, inhumane "flesh factory" environment where the monkeys are subjected to a process that includes "incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus." Then: "harvesting the virus resulting from step (c); and... (ii) preparing a vaccine from the harvested virus."
!!False!! The patent readily explains that ingredients of the vaccine are derived from CELL-LINES, derived themselves from the kidneys of the African Green Monkey. ("incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus.")
Cell-lines are cell populations that have been laboratory-immortalised for the purposes of culture, whose populations explode & are sold as vector products by biological suppliers. They are derived from a parent generation of cells taken from animal tissues, yes, but given right medium continue to divide - some established cell-lines are up to decades old.
Green Monkey kidney cell-line cells are a very common medium for viruses in virological research, they exist in flasks, in incubators, in every university bioscience department in this country, & the labs of any company dealing in virology (floating or settled in beds in sustaining fluid, visible only under microscope).
The pre-market testing of the vaccine will take the lives of a great many animals. The culture incubation, however, takes/took the life of the parent animal which gave rise to the line, once.
I have herpes-inoculated flasks of cultured Green Monkey cells using the hands with which I'm typing. It is a moral limbo: the cells are those of a deliberately killed animal, but are now perpetual & long independent.
The generation of viral derivatives for vaccines & virology research using Green Monkey kidney cell-lines does not involve infecting live monkeys, or the hyperbolic bollocks about "flesh factories". The authour has misunderstood the term cell-line, and constructed a shock story around this misunderstanding. It is false. The article is nonsense.
Live animals, including primates, are used in virology research, but not in the way this article describes.
Last edited by Prawnil; Aug 24th, 2009 at 09:13 PM.
Reason: spelling
^ Thanks Prawnil!
I'm always wary about articles like the one Frank posted as i know nothing about the process.
Although the African Green Monkey thing is interesting.
As a child i remember vividly the 'Green Monkey Disease' scare in the UK when a few scientist died as a result of working on the virus in a lab and it escaping. There was a national scare at the time, with no one really knowing what the death toll could be!
^ I'd not heard of that. I do know that Smallpox scared everyone with the laboratory outbreak which killed a scientist/doctor, their partner and daughter as well I think.
They were housed in a secure unit (Catherine-De-Barnes I think).
When they had died the goverment levelled the whole site.
I'd be interested if anyone had further details/information on my earlier posting.
^ I don't think that's quite right, Frank. Janet Parker was the last person to die of smallpox in the UK in 1978, and she did catch it from a sample in a lab - but she was the only person to die. Her mother contracted it but recovered, and no one else was infected.
Maybe you're thinking of the Bradford outbreak in - I think - 1962? Which was the last wild outbreak in the UK. It was a cluster resulting from a child coming in from another country who infected other children on the hospital ward where he/she was admitted, and then this spread to some hospital staff and the children's visitors - I think there were about 6 deaths in total, but the infection was controlled and the BRI certainly wasn't demolished afterwards!
^ No - I was thinking of the right issue. That poor lady did end up in Catherine-De-Barnes - which was the national isolation unit. Unfortunately there was three connected deaths in one form or another. Although suicide by slashing your throat seemed a desperate way to want to go.
this is really interesting especially if you look at the number of cases against how many died. Look at it as a percentage and you can see that the awful health service we have here makes death much less likely than in canada and the US.
I realised yesterday that my cold might be swine flu and so I called up today and I have been authorised to get Tamiflu. I wasn't going to get it but the guy on the phone said that if I got swine flu again I wouldn't get it offered to me again so I took the code he gave me.
I felt really awful yesterday but not so bad today. I had weird symptoms like ear ache which I didn't even realise were symptoms of swine flu. The antiviral collection point he gave me is nowhere near where I live and we don't drive. I can call up and get someone to come to my house take some ID and then they can collect it for me.
I don't think I'm in your next of the woods (I live in Bucks) but if I am and I can get/do anything for you let me know. I know I'm worried that if Hubby and I both got sick none of my family would know how to feed a vegan!
Quitting something because it's hard is wrong, and quitting something because it's wrong is hard. One takes cowardice, the other bravery.
^ Aww thanks. I just got my husband to call back up and apparently there is a collection point about 15 minutes away from where I live! The other man on the phone earlier just gave me the wrong information. I hope you don't get it Ms Derious although to be honest it wasn't terrible for me but it's different for different people anyway.
I will get the Tamiflu this time and just keep it in case I get flu again and might need it if it's worse next time.
^ Thanks Harpy. This was the same man that gave me the wrong information about the collection points so he might have got that info wrong too? Maybe you can only take Tamiflu once a year?
Yes, I can see they wouldn't want to keep dishing it out to the same people, but it seems odd that if you don't accept it the first time it's offered they won't offer it a second time, if that's what you/he meant However as you say he doesn't seem the most reliable source.
I went to my GP Monday and Tuesday this week so I assume I must have caught it from someone there. I have only been ill since Wednesday afternoon so I must have had it very mildly. I know someone that was ill with it for over a fortnight. Another symptom was that I couldn't breathe properly when I was lying down so I had to have about three pillows.
harpy
Are you going to take it or just keep it on hand in case, like my friend in NZ who says she's carrying it around in her handbag?
Haha. I'm just going to keep it in case I get it more severely this winter.
^of course i just saw this
It's great BC that you seem to be able to fight off the swine flu on your own. I think it's a bright idea to hold onto the Tamiflu in case you need it another time. Not being able to breathe properly must have been worrisome. Was it just b/c of congestion? Btw, I always sleep w/ 3 pillows.
Not being able to breathe properly must have been worrisome. Was it just b/c of congestion? Btw, I always sleep w/ 3 pillows.
It was because my nose was so blocked up and so I was trying to breathe through my mouth but that made me cough more. I am still a bit short of breath now. I think it must be quite a nasty illness if you have it severely. I only threw up once though and I just felt queasy a few times and I thought swine flu would mean constant vomiting but obviously not.
thanks, we thought we had it earlier this year, this is a similar thing again, its very aggravating.
BC are you feeling better now?.
BTW i think we must have a problem with the swine flu round here now as the volunteers association have be advertising for 'flu friends' in the local paper this and last week.
^ I feel a lot better now but I still have a cough, sore left ear, dry throat and diarrhea still. Today I'm blowing my nose every hour instead of every 15 minutes like yesterday.
I don't have muscle pains, queasiness, headache and fever like I did the last two days. (I had thought I had a cold mixed with a hangover.)
I wonder if we can sue (don't know how you spell that) these governments for putting our health at risk by allowing these 'farming' practices?
They seem so stupid to me...I bet they haven't stopped the dangerous farming practices yet. I bet they won't. They'll just give more antibiotics/drugs etc. to the farm animals.
I wish we could sue! But how can we when the government refuses to do anything about the situation? It's just appalling. More antibiotics and shots for the animals, and more antibiotics and vaccines for us as these viruses continue to mutate...gosh. If the demand for meat didn't exist, how much healthier, happier, and safer would we humans and animals be?? :-(
"I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it." Abraham Lincoln
I realised yesterday that my cold might be swine flu and so I called up today and I have been authorised to get Tamiflu. I wasn't going to get it but the guy on the phone said that if I got swine flu again I wouldn't get it offered to me again so I took the code he gave me.
It isn't actually possible to get swine flu again once you've had it. Your body develops an immunity to it as a result of the original infection.
my son is still off school with it .
we got up early this morning as he really wanted to go back, but he's still as white as a sheet and coughing so i told him he has to wait. Pointless rushing it, he'll only feel ill again.
I thought i'd got off lightly but i feel quite bad again today and this cough is annoying! .
My husband still feels sick all the time, did you have that, BC? .
I'm feeling better today though it always gets worse at night .
The stomach troubles were quite bad and lasted ages. The GP I saw later on said there was nothing to be done about that, you just have to let it run it's course. I just drank lots of water.
Yes. I felt it more difficult to breathe lying down and that is one of the SF symptoms.
Re: Swine Flu
cobweb
i wonder if dogs can get it?
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Re: Swine Flu
I hope you don't get it Ms Derious although to be honest it wasn't terrible for me but it's different for different people anyway.
Today I'm blowing my nose every hour instead of every 15 minutes like yesterday.
The Link Between Factory Farming and H1N1
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