Stop the worrying by pinpointing the cause.
For many people, getting the flu or another respiratory virus isn’t a very big deal - it might mean a couple of days off from work, some aches and coughing, and then you get better. But what we sometimes forget is that influenza can cause severe illness and even death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year in the United States about 200,000 people are hospitalized due to influenza and 36,000 people die from flu-related causes.
When the cold is not the flu.
In addition to the flu, there are at least a dozen other common viruses and bacteria that cause respiratory illness. Viruses are at least three to four times more common than bacteria as a cause of respiratory infection. Until recently, it was difficult to tell the different respiratory viruses apart, because many of them produced similar symptoms, and tests to distinguish between the different viruses were either unreliable or took several days to produce a result. In a lot of cases, when doctors saw patients with flu-like symptoms, all they could really do was send them home and tell them to get rest and plenty of fluids. Some doctors would also give their patients antibiotics – which only work against bacteria, not viruses – even if they didn’t know whether the infection was bacterial or viral. This unnecessary use of antibiotics contributes to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as “superbugs”.