I just got over a very phlegmy cold and now I seem to have caught another, this time with a dry hacking cough. I usually get a cold about once a year, never back to back like this. What gives?
Colds and flu are not the same thing.
I got a flu shot and the next day the paper said the shot will likely not work on the strain that is coming. 20 bucks out the window.
Well, I have never been able to tell the difference. All I know is I feel like crap.
There’s a nasty cold moving around these parts. I’m just getting over it and starting to notice everybody I meet on the street is blowing his nose.
Countless people think that a bad cold = the flu. That is so inaccurate that it does a huge disservice to ignorance fighting. Most people get colds once in a while. However, most people have never gotten the true flu. It is a serious disease and can kill. I got the true flu for the first time this year and it resulted in two inpatient hospital stays. I ended up with acute bronchitis, pneumonia, and then a very rare blood-born staph infection. I don’t take too kindly to people that throw the term “flu” casually around these days. After two months of this, I have not fully recovered and I have to go to several doctor’s appointments a week to take or go over lab tests. My voice hasn’t recovered either. Colds should never be confused with the very serious problem that is the flu. They aren’t even related.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_104.html
You know where this link goes… I don’t need to explain it…
The standard flu shot immunizes against from 4-8 strains of the flu; the exact number varies each year.
It takes 6-9 months to manufacture the number of shots that are needed each fall, so about a year early, medical experts make their best guess at which strains will be most common next fall, and include those in the flu shot formula. If they choose correctly, the flu shot is very effective that next year. But sometimes different strains turn out to be the ones that spread most widely that year, in that case the flu shot has little or no effect.
Lighten up there, shag, no offense. I even admitted I didn’t know the difference. Anyway, I am getting pretty tired of this. I have been sick for four weeks now and it is really getting to be a pain in the ass. I have a gang of stuff to take care of and zero energy to do it.
I’m with Shagnasty, though perhaps with a touch less stridency. 
Conflating “bad cold” with “flu” in the common parlance breeds a dangerous complacency. (I blame the cold medicine manufacturers, who connect the two diseases in the public mind with their advertising.) Folks who’ve had a bad cold and expect the flu to be no worse will be in for a very nasty surprise. (And folks who mistakenly think a flu is no worse than a bad cold are less likely to get the flu shots they ought to be getting every year.)
I’ve only had a flu once, when I was 12, but I remember the experience vividly and shudder at the prospect of ever having it again. Soaring fevers, sweats, uncontrollable shivering, vertigo, and assorted digestive miseries.
I had that as a youngster too, but add in bizarre hallucinations. I had a somewhat lesser version about 20 years ago, so I guess that’s the difference.
So back to my OP, before we get into a pissing contest about who has had the flu and who hasn’t, is it possible to get two colds, from two different strains, one right after another? That seems to be what is going on with me.
You have probably picked up two different cold virii (viruses? whatever) or you have had one virus and then picked up a number of secondary bacterial infections that are picking on a weakened immune system.
:eek: :eek: :eek: Am I gonna die?
You know, oddly enough, there is a killer could virus running around.
I’m seriously confused now. I normally catch a few colds every year. Stuffy/runny nose, fever, lasts about a week. I also get what my family has always called the flu, occasionally. Nausea, vomiting and the runs. Oh yeah, fever, too. Normally lasts about a day. So what is that?
After reading these posts, I’m guessing mild food poisoning? Just a way WAG, but obviously not the flu. Damn, I can’t believe I’ve lived this long thinking I had the flu a few times every year.
I was always under the impression that a cold was typically bacterial and things like the adenovirus or flu virus could not be correctly categorized as a cold.
I caught an adenovirus last June, it was horrible. My daughter (2 yo) was hospitalized for 4 days due to pneumonia and my wife and I missed a week of work each due to the virus. I don’t think I have ever been that sick in my life. Interestingly, my 5 year old daughter was barely affected.
One final thought after reading the master contribution to this thread: I always thought the reason winter was the cold and flu season, was that in the summer the increased UV radiation from the longer days and higher insolation tended to kill off the bugs on surfaces that are exposed to the sun, like peoples skin. Any possibility this hypothesis holds water?
I think these 1-2 days of Nausea, vomiting, etc that are commonly called stomach flu are bacterial infections from unwashed or improperly cooked food. A certain strain of e-coli maybe (not that killer stain that kills a few people every year)? Just a WAG.
Colds are not bacterial; they are viral. But the are caused by a different type of virus than the flu.
This is exactly what I have. Just got over a rotten cold and now a hacking cough is trying to take hold in my chest. I only get a cold about every two or three years so two in one year is really unusual. I’m peeved.
We wouldn’t even have to put up with this if Mao had spent more time bringing his country out of the stone age, and less time raping 11 year old girls on a daily basis. :mad: Way to go, Mr. Pervo dictator man.