flu of various kinds

[dhamali]

i have recently heard that new forms of flu or kinds have been "discovered" or "found". Not that i find this suprising or unbelievable. yet i wonder the details and truth as to whether there are and why. (even though i feel asking why may be taboo to some). I just dont see how new diseases and contagions continue to mysteriously develop each year. Abouta week and a half ago i was ill, unable to eat anything except the tiniest occasional few bites of sumthing when i forced myself, i was constantly nauseated and getting light headed and dizzy, and sick to mystomach feeling like it was eating itself. and other imaginable symptoms that followed with aches and pains. there was coughing or sniffles or stuffiness or chest congestion. it was thought i may have had the stomach flu. but it didnt feel like an illness i have ever had before. it was a very miserable illness that im still trying to fully recover from. Is it probable that this was a flu? and how many kinds of flu are there? What is the current estimated percentile of middle aged adults in the united states with moderate health who are infected with any of the kinds of flu that die or nearly die? any helpful responses are appreciated.

[ggreg]

P.P.S.S.  Correction, I forgot to say more people killed on highways IN ONE YEAR than the entire Vietnam War.  Oh, I think I need to go soak my head!

[ggreg]

P.S.  Good grief, when my post came up, I had NO IDEA it had gotten that long.  I apologize for my speech.  But it's an interesting subject, to be sure.

[ggreg]

That's a lot of questions.  As for whether you had a stomach flu or not, yes, it sounds like it.  One thing you can do, to be sure that was what was wrong, is to visit your doc and see will he take a stool sample and test it for any virus or bacteria that is active in there, and he'll also draw blood and see what that looks like.  And even tho this flu seemed diff than others, many flus are indeed diff than others, like you'll hear people say, "That was the worst flu I've ever had."  This doesn't mean it's some sort of wierd new deadly flu; it just means it was another strain of regular flu.  Virus microscopic makeup differs under a variety of situations, mostly just a survival thing in any organism, and each virus will have slightly different strains, where one will make you rather sicker than another.  But the deadly flus, those are mutations, usually that occur because it jumps from animal to people.

So, as to some truly scary flu stories out there, and actually there have been a few outbreaks of some deadly viruses in the last decade, this is absolutely true... I can remember when this one bird flu killed a bunch of people in Asia, and they were so afraid it would come to North America, that they had the Centers for Disease Control officials up in Alaska with binoculars scanning the horizon for weeks during bird migration time, looking to see if flocks of a particular group of birds were coming that might have that deadly form of bird flu.  Fortunately, it did not come to us.  There was another scare that didn't amount to anything that came up from Mexico.

The reason that flu viruses will sometimes change into a deadly form, rather than just small variations here and there, is because of several factors.  The main cause is something to do with animal-to-animal interactions and/or animal-human interaction.  If memory serves me correct, there were some markets in Southeast Asia, I believe, where pigs (swine flu) were kept near where birds were flocking, and somehow a deadly flu went from pig to bird, and because of the close proximity of crowds of people shopping at the somewhat unkept market, some people wound up with a particularly vicious form of bird flu that had mutated when it left the swine, and further mutated when it went to man.  This thing was contained to a rather large area in Asia, but just barely, and many, many people died.  I can still remember vividly from that time period, a LOT of birds were found all over our neighborhood laying dead for no reason, we were afraid on account of it being all over the news about the deadly bird flu going around, and I even reported it to the CDC.

Anyhow, whenever people get really sick, it's only natural to think the absolute worst, Woody Allen made a lot of money on movies that threw in some stuff about his well-know hypochondria, he always thought he had cancer or something.  And often in this forum, people will get constipated, for example, and automatically assume they have colon cancer.  Some people won't ever let go of the idea that they have a brand-name illness that has the potential of killing them.  So, let me TRY to persuade you in realizing that what you have is most definitely not a deadly strain of flu.  The number one tip-off is:  YOU ARE STILL ALIVE.  For if you had a deadly flu, you would have been dead not within days, but within HOURS.  You wouldn't even have time to think it through.  Also, another reason you don't have a scary flu is because you are acting just like normal flu people, which is typically the flu takes FOREVER to clear up, usually two months is about right!!  No one ever wants to get the flu because it makes us so dang sick!!  This is why we have annual flu shots, so people won't get so sick, for even tho normal flus don't kill people as a rule, there are some people at risk to get complications like pneumonia that WILL kill a person, and this would be the elderly, small children, people with weakened immune systems like cancer patients, stuff like that.

As for how many people regularly die from the flu, again if memory serves, it is only those who are already infirm, as I mentioned, that will die of COMPLICATIONS of flu.  And it's not that many, as compared to how many people die on the highway from car accidents every year.  Do you realize that more people are killed on the roads of the good old U.S. of A. than were killed in the ENTIRE Vietnam War???  That thing went on for 10 years, tens of thousands of young Americans were killed over there who were for the most part drafted into service (today we have all-volunteer military).  So, my friend, I appreciate your concern, but the flu is the least of your worries.  If there's a deadly strain they're worried about, it ALWAYS gets all over the news, and people get a little worked up, and all we can do is hope the CDC comes up with good vaccines every year, or when there's a deadly outbreak in some crowded and unsanitary part of the world, they'll send folks over there to help contain it.  

HOWEVER, that's not to say that we have nothing to fear from deadly flus, for as recently as this past century, the early 1900s around the time of World War I, a bunch of people in America died from a particularly deadly flu, I think it was called the sleeping sickness, because that's what happened, people went to sleep and never woke up.  Remember the movie "Awakenings," it was about a group of those people who survived but became paralyzed from it, and it was about a doctor who wanted to help them.  But we learned a lot from that flu, as well as previous flu outbreaks, well enough that that Asian flu didn't get to us.

Hope this helps you in your efforts to be free of the tireesome flu worries.  As for how many flus there are, as many people that live in our country, that's how many flus there are.  Altho I think insects, some of which carry diseases like the plague (fleas on rats), they are the largest community of living beings ever in existence, as many as the stars, and there was one plague that killed half the population OF THE WORLD.  Pretty impressive, eh?  But that was waaaaay back hundreds of years ago, when they had NO geniuses yet who figured out how come people got sick.  At least the flu is understood pretty well.  So, not to worry.  Besides, at least you don't have the plague!  My gosh, if the plague were to hit, TALK ABOUT HEADLINE NEWS!  We'd be running for the hills!