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Flu: relapse can be pneumonia

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AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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11 Jan 2013, 11:38 am

Quote:
New York Times, Denise Grady, Sept. 3, 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/healt ... .html?_r=1

“ . . . In children without chronic health problems, it is a warning sign if they seem to recover from the flu but then relapse with a high fever, Dr. Frieden said. The relapse may be bacterial pneumonia, . . . ”

And presumably this is the case for adults, too. I think it's well worth a phone call to the doctor, and hopefully he or she can call in a prescription which you can start in like three hours. Yes, I think it's worth playing it safe.

The other warning sign, very directly and obviously, is if you start having trouble breathing. That can either be direct viral pneumonia or indirect bacterial pneumonia.



LKL
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13 Jan 2013, 5:26 pm

YES.
If you're having trouble getting enough air, it's time to go to the doctor whether it's a relapse or not. You might not get antibiotics, but there are symptom-based breathing treatments that can make you feel better while your body fights off the virus.



AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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14 Jan 2013, 1:33 pm

You're welcome. :D I'm glad you liked my post. And thank you for being interested and for diving into this topic. I also have this:

Quote:
World Health Organization, Transcript of virtual press conference with Gregory Hartl, Spokesperson for H1N1, and Dr Nikki Shindo, Medical Officer, Global Influenza Programme, 12 November 2009.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/vpc_tran ... shindo.pdf

"2. Secondly, people who are not from the at-risk group but who have persistent or rapidly worsening symptoms should also be treated with antivirals. These symptoms include difficulty breathing and a high fever that lasts beyond 3 days.

"3. Thirdly, people who have already developed pneumonia should be given both antivirals and antibiotics, as we have seen that, in many severe cases of H1N1-caused illness, bacterial infection develops. These medicines, antivirals and antibiotics, if used in a timely manner, can help save lives."


More children in the United States died from influenza during the winter 2009-10 flu season than during a 'normal' flu season. In addition, for average years, the death toll from influenza in the United States is approximately the same as motor vehicle fatalities. All the same, the World Health Organization was widely perceived as over-hyping H1N1 swine flu. And here is where we get into questions of how human reasoning works. For no matter how serious a situation, if it is 1% overstated, people tend to feel worked and played and reject the whole thing. This is almost a cognitive processing flaw on the part of human beings. And so one lesson for my own activism is that I will typically do better by slightly understating a situation and a set of facts.