Ignorance fought, thanks.
You know I had believed this since I was a teenager, no idea where I got the idea. Anyway, from here:
The hacking cough strain seems to be quite popular this year. My office sounds like a TB ward. I’ve never known so many of my friends & coworkers to be down at the same time with a bug like this.
Again, but coherent, this time, please? 
Cold and flu viruses originate in China and arise due to the primitive agriculture that is practiced there.
Oh, there are definitely viruses that can cause those too, and that are transmitted from one person to another. Says the preschool teaching assistant, wearily. Our kids have been passing one around since just after Christmas, and it’s a doozy. We adults are washing our hands so religiously you’d think we’d been visited by the ghost of Dr Semmelweiss.
Uh, what? Either I’m being whooshed, or you’re claiming that all cold and flu viruses come from China, in which case: cite?
Well, yes.
But not any time soon 
I popped in after reading your post and some of the posts above which mention secondary infections and it’s entirely possible you may have developed a case of bronchitis or a sinus infection. Or simply have picked up a nastier-than-average virus which leaves you wiped out longer than a standard cold might.
I’d definitely suggest you see a doctor to try to ID/rule out some of those causes. It might just be that you need to have a couple of days of “down time” to give your body a chance to finish recuperating, or you might need medication for something.
I’ve had all of those permutations at one time or another - last summer a “minor” cold turned into a nasty case of bronchitis that flared the asthma, required antibiotics and steroids and I felt sick for most of a month. Years ago I had a persistent sinus infection that - despite treatment with appropriate antibiotics - left me feeling utterly drained for 2 months. My daughter has been fighting something for 3 weeks now - she actually had one cold, was getting better, then evidently caught another.
During all of my cold/asthma-flareup/sinus infection scenarios, however, I’ve always looked forward to the day when I felt better. 10 years ago when I had what appears to be true influenza (with fevers, feeling I’d been worked over with a baseball bat, chills…) I was really, really hoping I wouldn’t live much longer. Obviously I did not get my wish
Most influenza infections that affect humans do come out of China. That appears to be because China has such a large population of poultry and hog farms where sanitation is pretty much not a consideration, and there’s much intermingling of the above-noted species, both of which easily harbor influenza viruses which co-mingle, pick up new traits, and leap from species to species to man, eventually.
Influenza will always be with us, but the rate of new mutations and how quickly they’re passed on to humans would decline if there wasn’t such a large ready supply of flu incubators in China.
I’m not aware of the same situation applying to colds.
Seemingly everybody in my office has gotten sick except for:
- the hypochondriac
- me
Strangely, I’ve avoided getting a cold of any kind for the past two years. Either I’m the Highlander or else my fate is just to be run over by a bus.
However, in Southern California, the weather has been odd (hot and cold at unusual times) and weird things have been blooming and I’m seemingly allergic to everything.
I’ve had the severe hacking cough for a few days now (it’s amazing how sore some of my torso muscles are, just from the coughing).
But it’s not following the pattern that most of my colds have followed: This one didn’t start out with a sore throat, but with the coughing. For a few days I thought it might be an allergy, since I didn’t really feel sick back then. And the coughing is barely affected by decongestants and cough medicine. And last night I felt rather feverish for a few hours. So it’s not a typical cold, but what the hell is it?
Probably norovirus, actually.
I’m watching everyone around me fall victim to the flu, waiting for my turn. But what’s really annoying is how much they whine – oooh, you just don’t understand how bad it was!
Um, had pneumonia six times, and they all told me to sack up last time. So my sympathy, she is low. I just wish they’d stop coughing on me while they’re sniveling for pity.
Bubonic Plague. You’re boned.
Can I have your Ipod?
I’ve thought I had the flu a number of times over the years. . . and then this year, I actually got it. Oh, holy God, I have never been so sick in my life. Four days of a 102-103 degree fever, two weeks home from work (and a week of those were full fledged no phone no email sick days-- first time in my working career I’ve been so sick I was totally offline).
Someone around here once said that you know it’s the flu because if someone dropped $100 bill on your lawn, you wouldn’t (couldn’t) go get it. I think that’s about right. I couldn’t have gone to work even if they’d threatened to fire me.
I will never, ever confuse a cold with the flu again-- I also hope I never get it again and will make a point to get a flu shot from now on.
Seems I am turning the corner. Feel better today. Not congested, no coughing jags. I still feel kind of woozy, but not like before. This has really sucked, not just because it was pretty bad symptomatically, but the duration (over 3 weeks) is the longest of any cold I have ever had.
Pink?
Now the coughing has escalated to the point that I have pulled something around my lower left rib cage. Now it hurts even when I’m not coughing, and much more when I am.
Ah yes, I long for the good ole days when all I had to deal with was diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, kidney problems and chronic depression.
This also varies based on what types of flu you had early on in life since the flu virus is a classic example of ‘original antigenic sin’ Francis (1960). This means that some people will gain little to no benefit from a flu shot.
FWIW, It is still worth it to get the shots because the flu is horrible.