Stomach "flu"

Factual Questions
1

Right now at my workplace, people are dropping like flies with an intestinal illness with its usual flurry of unpleasant events. It’s been going on for about 3 weeks. My girlfriend, who does not work with me, had similar symptoms last weekend.

When these “flus” (I use quotes because I believe this isn’t infuenza) spread around, what is the most common method of transmission? Wouldn’t the intestinal problems be spread by, well, things that come through the intestinal tract?

Since so many people have been felled by this, I feel like I’m living on borrowed time and I have 2-3 days of riding the porcelain bus ahead of me.

2

It depends on exactly what biological mechanism is working here. If it’s bacterial, contact transmission with infected fluids is the most likely. If it’s viral, contact or aersolization are both possible depending on the type of virus.

If you’re at week 3 and you haven’t picked it up yet, odds are getting better that you’ve already had the contageon and have survived unscathed. Can’t say for sure, because everything hinges on just how exposed you’ve been and the incubation time. But, IIRC with most pathogens, you should have seen something by week 3 if you were going to get really sick.

Good luck. Tank up on the vitamin C now and be super religious with the instant sanitizer.

3

Actually about three weeks ago, I had some “lower intestinal distress” accompanied by a fever and body aches that lasted about a day and a half.

In my world of rationalization, maybe I got this bug before everybody else and already weathered it.

Or else, it will just come back and hit me like a ton of bricks.

4

You can always hope for it to mutate to a more virulent form as it cycles through your coworkers :wink:

5

It could be norovirus. This is responsible for many “stomach flu” outbreaks, and is easily spread via aerosol. Researchers have been surprised at how far vomit aerosols can spread. I’d love to find the cite, but as I recall, they analysed the resultant illness spread after someone at a large party in a resturant vomited. The illness pattern was rather wider than they expected (and it was not food poisoning - the distribution pattern was specific).

Friends of ours got on a 20 hour flight to Sydney - someone was sick with a virus 2 hours into the flight. Two hours incubation…
It really must have been awful - 16 hours of throwing up in cattle class, and the area of infection increasing.

Si

6

Jeeze Bob! Three weeks ago you were sick, and now for about the last three weeks you coworkers and girlfriend have been getting sick? Hmmmmmmm.

7

However I’m not responsible for my brother in St. Louis getting sick. He fell victim to some still undiagnosed food problem at an event that sickened 33 people.