God, it’s no fun at all. At least it’s short-lived if you have a healthy-ish system. I had it a couple of years ago, and was feeling OK a couple of days after the messiness stopped.
My dad had a bout just before Christmas, and he phoned the doctor in his village, and after the doc heard what the symptoms were, he asked my dad not to come into the surgery because of the infection risk - the doc would come out if the vomiting and spray-painting lasted more than a day or so.
This is pretty controversial, and most researchers in the field think it is highly unlikely. Vomiting does produce aerosols. Breathing those in is unlikely to cause infection unless you breath through your mouth, which would actually be an oral exposure. Also, vomiting is very good at depositing a fine spray on all surfaces within about 3 ft, so it is likely that the secondary cases are actually surface-to-hand-to-mouth transmission. It’s very doubtful that this is true airborne transmission. Here is an interesting article addressing some of these questions.
Also, for those of you wanting to decon your house, beware of bleach wipes. They often don’t contain bleach or not enough to inactivate norovirus. It’s much better to buy straight bleach, dilute it 1:10 in water and use that to wipe down surfaces. You can follow that with an alcohol based disinfectant to remove the residual bleach, just be sure it doesn’t contain ammonia. In the lab, we use 70% ethanol to remove the bleach.
Marco?
In 2005 I wasn’t a toddler but I landed in the hospital, too - same problem, same solution.
Dehydration is nothing to play with, if you can’t stay hydrated get to a doctor!
I ended up in the ER with dehydration once with a horrible bout of diarrhea too, years ago. I was aware of the dangers of dehydration, and thought I was drinking enough, but I underestimated. My rule for stomach illnesses at this point is drink about two or three times as much as you think you need - just keep pounding the Pedialyte or Gatorade or whatever you are able to keep down.
I hope they didn’t have to go early…
This has been going around the US for several months now. My whole county (or at least, practically everyone I know in it) had it in October. Since then I’ve seen Facebook friends reporting it in Colorado, Indiana, and Alabama, so it’s widespread.
Six hours into it I asked my husband to take me to the hospital and he wouldn’t. 36 hours later he was coming out of the throes and apologized to me. He’s had giardia in the hills of Nepal; says this was just as bad.
Wonder if it’s a new strain that transmits particularly well, or what. Oh, just because this is another opportunity to mention it, my family also got the virulent new strain of hand-foot-mouth this summer and it sucked.
Please tell me you typed essentially the same thing in another thread months ago. Or maybe I’m starting to develop some extrasensory precognitive powers,
The first I heard of this was when my gf’s mother mentioned that lots of people have had norovirus. Nobody I know has.
Loads - and loads and loads - of people I know have, however, had The Lurgey. Or The Lurgee or Lurgy. I haven’t seen so many people use that term since I was a kid. It’s kinda general illness, feeling really unwell, bunged up nose, maybe a headache, usually including some coughing but only incidental gastrointestinal troubles, and it lasts longer than colds usually do, then goes away and comes back.
A hell of a lot of people coughing on the tube because they were still just well enough to work.
But not Norovirus.
Yeah, staying hydrated was the problem, she couldn’t keep anything down - the docs at the hospital were very pleased that I’d kept a record of the times she was sick, every type of fluid I’d tried to get down her and how long it had stayed (usually < 30 sec).
I’d only written it all down because the GP had been so dismissive the first time I took her in. Bloody well took it seriously when he saw the list, sent us straight over to Emergency. Grumble mutter Not that I’m still pissed off a decade later 
I wish Michigan had. 
The ass pee I can deal with, but the cramps as it rushes there are miserable. Not a damn second of sleep.
The subeditors at The Sun have excelled themselves with a headline on the norovirus epidemic today…
Winter chunderland
We’ve all had that in my team at work - a 3 day cycle of feeling lousy, then dreadful, then a little better, repeating for a fortnight or more.
One of my co-workers called in with ‘stomach upset’ today though, which does not bode well.
Are people infectious before they develop the symptoms, though? You might be OK if they picked it up elsewhere, and the onset came while they were at home.
I had it in 2009 (on a round-Britain cruise) and was lucky in that it was fairly mild in my case. One vomit (though I was queasy for about 12 hours afterward - not helped by rough weather:() and about a couple of hours of the squitters.
I was quarantined in my cabin for 48 hours and then allowed back into on-board society and was fine for the rest of the voyage.
The cruise was cut short by a day, though, so that the ship could be fumigated on return to port.
This is maybe the best word I’ve ever heard for it. Well and truly stolen.. Thank you! 
I assume whatever we endured over Christmas was Norwalk, as it was incredibly intense. It took nearly a week for the broken blood vessels in my face to heal after barfing that hard. I wound up almost passing out in the waiting room of the doctor’s office on Boxing Day, and never have I been more grateful for an injection than when they pumped me full of Phenergan.
I knew I had truly been ill when red Gatorade tasted like the best thing mankind had ever invented!
If that phenergan injection burned as much as the last one I had, this is really saying a lot!
I probably did. I never pass up a chance to repeat something interesting.
Huh, you can get Giardia right here in the good ol’ USA, no need to travel to exotic places.