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Fighting the Flu May Hurt Those Around You
sciencehabit writes "When you've got the flu, it can't hurt to take an aspirin or an ibuprofen to control the fever and make you feel better, right? Wrong, some scientists say. Lowering your body temperature may make the virus replicate faster and increase the risk that you transmit it to others. A new study claims that there are at least 700 extra influenza deaths in the United States every year because people suppress their fever."
You're fucked, but I feel better?
Dude, you are so fucked!
read about it in the last few years after one of my kids had an almost 105 fever one week
human pathogens like the 98.6 body temp and a fever is the body's natural way of fighting these pathogens
the flu virus also likes low humidity which is why people buy humidifiers in the winter time
unless my kid has some crazy high fever i try to avoid giving him tylenol or some other fever reducer as long as possible. usually until its almost time for bed
Considering the population of the USA the percentage of the population killed each year by this is 0.00022300095%. On the other hand deaths for the flu have been as low as 3000 yearly so that's 23.3% of deaths. Still, the number of deaths compared to the population makes it comparable to winning the lottery in any case.
Yes, but sometimes it's over responsive. In this case, allergies. The only true long-term healthy solution to allergies is to physically move somewhere else; even if that means another city/state/country.
Or allergy tolerance shots. I get injected every week with a dose of what I am allergic to, in order to slowly build up my allergen tolerance and lower the amount of drugs I need to control my symptoms. It's to the point where I can now have pets!
I'm quite sure the larger contributing factor to the flu spreading is people going to work while sick, not a suppressed fever.
Much better approach would be creating a culture in the USA where its OK to stay home when sick.
But of course we can't do that, because SOCIALISM.
There is. They're called opioids. But taking opioids makes you a dangerous drug addict, so you're not allowed to have them.
This may surprise a lot of people here, but in Germany the general rule is, if you get sick on vacation days and have a medical attestation prooving it, your affected (infected?) vacation days go back in your unused vacation.
This may surprise a lot of people in Germany, but in the US the general rule is, you don't have any vacation days and can't afford to take time off of work to see a doctor.
And if you do take time off of work to get well and figure out how to pay a doctor and any treatment they might suggest, it's entirely possible that, upon attempting to return to work, you find yourself jobless.
Therefore, again generally, we tend to take as many over-the-counter drugs as we can to begin feeling half-way human so we can keep working every day even if it kills us and those around us (which, according to TFA, it does).
Kid-proof tablet..