The reasoning behind this is that birds have higher body temperature in our fever range.
They put mice infected with a flu virus modified to have the bird variant of a gene in an oven and the virus indeed didn't degrade as much compared to the unmodified control.
Huh. I don’t know if I’m picking up what they’re putting down here, but it kind of sounds like suppressing fever e.g. with Tylenol would actually be bad for (normal) flu progression.
Fever helps against all kinds of illnesses but it can also be deadly, so having fever reducting medicine around is a smart precaution IMO. If you're otherwise healthy and are dealing with a mild seasonal infection and have got something important going on, I can see why people would choose to reduce symptoms at the cost of taking longer to recover.
Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
> Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
This is not specific to America; it's a thing in the entire Western world, and probably beyond. Because it's not like we have any other choice.
There is no slack in the system. Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year, and they prefer to save those up for when painkillers and cough medicine don't cut it anymore. Same with children, because a sick child staying home is usually equivalent to the parent taking a sick day themselves - either way, they're not at work.
We can talk about media or people going overboard once it becomes acceptable to skip work for a week because of sick kid, or in order to not get everyone in the office sick too.
They may be on paper, but I can't imagine taking one every time you have a runny nose or a sore throat. Everyone from your employer to social insurance[0] will start looking at you funny. It's just unexpected, even though it's how you're supposed to be handling infectious diseases to prevent spread.
--
[0] - Or whoever is backing the free healthcare in your country.
Yes, that much is true. Remote working for those in between cases is accepted, but it does reduce the practice to the luckier subset of office workers.
But flu isn’t just a cold, it’s a serious disease. If they are sick to the point they have fever then they can’t really afford to not rest as it has a cost in the form of longer health debt. And even short term, by letting the fever run and resting and being 100% operational can be more productive than being a zombie on medications for weeks.
By the time they can tell it's "the flu" and not just "a cold", they've been infecting everyone for days already.
Not to mention, cold is an infectious disease too (it's literally the same disease, just a weaker variant caused by strains that evolved their potency away), it too will spread to other people if they go to work.
> Not to mention, cold is an infectious disease too (it's literally the same disease, just a weaker variant caused by strains that evolved their potency away)
“The cold” is actually any of a wide variety of different viral diseases (caused by various forms of rhinovirus, coronavirus [0], and, I think, a few other kinds of viruses), none of which are flu (influenza virus). It is not a less potent flu.
[0] so calling COVID-19 “a bad cold” is correct from a certain point of view, despite being substantively misleading.
Fair, I was under the impression that some strains of influenza viruses are in the mix too, but apparently they're distinct and not part of the cocktail (surprising, given how the other viruses found themselves bucketed like this - they evolved to lose potency over time; I'd expect influenza strains would be on the same trajectory).
Still, my main point holds - you usually can't tell by symptoms alone, whether it's a common cold or a flu. In case you get severe symptoms, by the time you can, you've already been infectious for some time. So either way, the right time to call in sick is when you first notice the early symptoms - stuffy/runny nose, cough, headache, elevated body temperature. But obviously nobody does that, because it would mean calling in sick at random a dozen or more times per year.
Post-lockdown COVID was the only time I know of in the last few decades, and a brief time indeed, when it was socially acceptable to react to potential symptoms at the right time.
"Common cold" is what we call flu/COVID/bunch of other stuff when symptoms aren't severe enough to bother checking. There is no "cold virus", as cold isn't a specific sickness but a destination; it's a catch-all for respiratory pathogens that evolve their potency away.
By the time someone is able to tell they have "the flu", they should've been on a sick leave for 2-3 days already.
> Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year
I believe it's true in the USA, but not necessarily in Europe. It's quite normal that you have two infections a year, plus sometimes your kid catches something at a completely different time, so the law protects you in these situations.
Yes, but there's what the law says, and there's process, and there's expectations.
You can't just take a legal sick day each time you have a runny nose (good luck finding a doctor that fast), and even if you could, you'd quickly stand out. "Two infections a year" is an average for adults who power through remaining ones with painkillers and cough meds; if they didn't, we'd be talking 5+, probably closer to 10 if they have kindergarten-age kids.
Sounds like you have a pretty terrible employer. Of course there's an expectation that you're not taking sick leave for every minor cough or sniffle, but "powering through" infections is pretty absurd to expect from your employees.
It sounds like you just have a terrible employer. If I get the flu, I'm taking a few days off. If I feel poorly, I'm not working. Never been a problem with any employer. 5-10 sicks days a year is completely normal. You cannot be fired for this.
If you get the flu, and know it's a flu, you're a few days too late to take sick leave for it to be useful at preventing infecting your co-workers.
5-10 days of sick leave a year is perfectly normal, because that's how much people need to cover serious infections that cannot be easily powered through with meds.
Due to a condition I was born with, I was raised the opposite. No over the counter medication my entire life, with some exceptions. I usually decline pain management in ER, for things like broken bones, but for surgeries and stuff of course I have no choice as I go under.
I will take what the doctor orders though, to treat illness and conditions though thankfully at this stage there hasn't been many instances. Usually that's antibiotics.
Yeah it was pretty painful at first and at different times. Never like in tears pain though, just very distracting. I have broken two fingers and two collarbones, at different times, and a toe! Both collarbones were fully smashed to bits but did not pierce the skin, I had bruising for months.
I have an above average tolerance but I think what really helps is pain management techniques, which I believe can help all of us at different times of need. Chronic pain is a bitch, which I have, and not everyone has pain that is reasonably manageable, but even prescribed pain meds are really going to mess with you and I think it is worth avoiding if possible and not inhumane.
Copying Google AI's response here as it's at least as good as what I was going to recall:
> Fever is a key part of the innate immune system, acting as a protective response to infection by raising the body's temperature. This increase in temperature inhibits the growth of many pathogens, enhances the activity of immune cells like leukocytes, and improves the effectiveness of the adaptive immune response.
My Vietnamese in-laws commonly make a sweat tent to shorten the duration of sickness. I can't say if it works, but it's something I intend to try next time I'm sick.
When I feel like I have a virus I usually put on my hoody which I only wear when I feel ill and a scarf and before going to bed I drink a lot of herb or ginger tea (like two cans)
this is will heat up your body and you get some night sweats, this usually helps reducing the sick time.
I can't say if it actually helps, but its become a ritual for that occasion
Very simplified... It is a suppressor of symptoms like pain and fever which are the bodies way of letting you know something is damaged and killing off unknown foreign bodies respectively.
Suppressing symptoms does not remove the cause and is not a cure.
Pain being a way to let you know that something is damaged is close to true--close enough not to quibble with. But fever is not a way to let you know that foreign bodies are being killed off--that's his claim, and it's wrong.
> But fever is not a way to let you know that foreign bodies are being killed off--that's his claim, and it's wrong.
querez's point is that the sentence is meant to be parsed as:
> pain and fever which are the bodies way of <<letting you know something is damaged>> and <<killing off unknown foreign bodies>> respectively
So the claim is that fever is the body's way of killing off unknown foreign bodies, not the body's way of letting you know something is killing off unknown foreign bodies.
Although, we’re very unusual humans in the grand scheme of things. So using medication might be reasonable. The brain might start taking damage around 104F. That was probably a good tradeoff for a peasant farmer (our ancestors, on average). Most of us nowadays just think for a living, not such a good tradeoff for us. Take the fever suppressant, what’s the worst that’ll happen if you miss an extra day of work?
It's a fairly common notion to "sweat out" a flu. Stay in bed, wrap yourself up in lots of blankets and just sweat the damn thing out. High body heat kills the virus.
So it would make sense that drugs like tylenol/paracetamol would make you feel better, but would keep the flu alive in you for longer.
Anecdotally, I have used this technique many times, also drinking hot tea besides being wrapped in blankets, and at least for me it has worked much better than when taking any kind of antipyretics.
There are cases when the fever is dangerously high and antipyretics are necessary. But when the fever is supportable it certainly accelerates the healing.
That's what we do here (Czech republic), we don't take meds until the fever goes over 39°C (above 40 you are looking for trouble). You lay in bed and drink enough to compensate for sweating. My grandma would make you onion tea.
Isn’t it common knowledge that adults heal quicker with higher fever, and that suppressing fever is needed only if it reaches dangerous levels (in contrast to children where fever can be dangerous at lower levels)?
> There is no evidence that children with fever, as opposed to hyperthermia, are at increased risk of adverse outcomes such as brain damage.10,12,24–26 Fever is a common and normal physiologic response that results in an increase in the hypothalamic “set point” in response to endogenous and exogenous pyrogens.12,26 In contrast, hyperthermia is a rare and pathophysiologic response with failure of normal homeostasis (no change in the hypothalamic set point) that results in heat production that exceeds the capability to dissipate heat.12,26 Characteristics of hyperthermia include hot, dry skin and central nervous system dysfunction that results in delirium, convulsions, or coma.26 Hyperthermia should be addressed promptly, because at temperatures above 41°C to 42°C, adverse physiologic effects begin to occur.10,12,27 Studies of health care workers, including physicians, have revealed that most believe that the risk of heat-related adverse outcomes is increased with temperatures above 40°C (104°F), although this belief is not justified.7,26,28–30 A child with a temperature of 40°C (104°F) attributable to a simple febrile illness is quite different from a child with a temperature of 40°C (104°F) attributable to heat stroke.
You cannot get a dangerously high fever. You can get a dangerously high body temperature from heat stroke, or I suppose you could have some rare hypothalmic disease. But fever as an immune response is not dangerous to adults or children.
kind of sounds like suppressing fever e.g. with Tylenol would actually be bad for (normal) flu progression.
you're just the tip of the iceberg my friend - did you know "horse dewormer" ivermectin has long been given to humans - for decades - to treat parasitic infections?
> Fever is used by organisms as diverse as fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals (see for reference Basu and Srivastava, 2003). Since fever is metabolically expensive, it must provide substantial advantage to the host. Surprisingly little is known about immunological effects mediated by fever, a lack of understanding that might be attributable in part to the common ignorance in clinical practice with respect to benefits fever might provide. Post-operative infections can be prolong survival: patients developing empyema after lung cancer
surgery have improved 5-year survival (50% (n = 18) vs 22%
(n = 411)) (Ruckdeschel et al, 1972). In this light, it seems
unfortunate that fever is usually suppressed in hospital routine.
> The phenomenon of spontaneous regression and remission from cancer has been observed by many physicians and was described in hundreds of publications. However, suggestive clues on cause or trigger are sparse and not substantiated by much experimental evidence. [...] At least in a larger fraction of cases a hefty feverish infection is linked with spontaneous regression in time and is investigated as putative trigger.
> Professor Busch in 1868 introduced the infection of cancer patients by purpose as a novel strategy to treat cancer. He achieved a dramatic regression with his first patient using live Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, the pathogen leading to erysipelas, published in the German Journal ‘Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift’ (Busch, 1868). Beginning in 1891, this strategy was exploited by Coley, who had some reading knowledge of German (Hall, 1998). Coley systematically applied Streptococcus pyogenes extracts – later called ‘Coley’s toxin’ – to cancer patients and achieved a remarkable rate of regressions. A retrospective compilation of cases considered inoperable at the time of treatment between 1891 and 1936, which was conducted by Wiemann and Starnes (1994, Table 2), determined a remission rate of 64% (108/170) and a 5-year survival rate of larger than 44%. Coley used to inject his extract once or twice a week over a period ranging from a few weeks to several months. His method became quite famous and was tested on hundreds of patients by him and contemporary physicians, but overshadowed by the development of X-ray treatment which was regarded to be much more powerful and of broader applicability.
> Since cancer is usually a slowly progressing disease with
occasionally long periods of dormancy, putative beneficial fever
effects should also precipitate as preventive efficacy. This can
indeed be found. In a cohort of 603 melanoma patients compared
to 627 population controls, an inverse correlation was found
between melanoma risk and number of recorded infections on the
one hand and between melanoma risk and fever height on the
other hand, leading to a combined reduction of melanoma risk of
about 40% for people with a history of three or more infections
with high fever above 38.51C (Koelmel et al, 1999). Mastrangelo
et al (1998) report a striking inverse correlation between the
number of infections and mortality from tumours in Italy in the
period 1890 –1960: every 2% reduction in the number of infectious diseases was followed by a 2% increase in tumours about 10 years
later.
You usually don't get a fever from a cold (except in Japanese anime), if there's a significant fever it's more likely to be a flu. Or, these days, could be Covid.
I wonder if Tryptase affects Avian flu as well. Anyone know?
I'd also argue my partner and I got Avian flu one Xmas from eating free range eggs when there was an Avian flu pandemic up the road from them in Norfolk and the British Govt ordered culls.
Tryptase:
"A striking finding was decreased tryptase content in mast cells with copper overload, whereas copper starvation increased tryptase content." [1]
"Influenza A viruses are negative-stranded RNA viruses. Like many other enveloped viruses, they code for a surface glycoprotein that must be cleaved by cellular proteases for activation. HA, a major influenza surface glycoprotein, is translated as a single protein, HA0. For viral activation, HA0 (assembled as trimers) must be cleaved by a trypsin-like serine endoprotease at a specific site, normally coded for by a single basic amino acid (usually arginine) between the HA1 and HA2 domains of the protein. After cleavage, the two disulfide-bonded protein domains produce the mature form of the protein subunits as a prerequisite for the conformational change necessary for fusion and hence viral infectivity" [2]
I also wonder, by virtue of being a single strand of RNA, how long does it take for mutations to make the virus no longer viable in the environment it resides in?
In other words is a this a 3-4day process of replication and mutation which in effect kills itself off, rendering the need for immune system response and cough, cold, flu rememdies nothing more than containment effects?
Well, if you let your innate immune system do its job, fever can actually kill many pathogens and also ramp up your immune system response. It's fascinating that human cells can survive at slightly higher temperatures than most pathogens, giving us an advantage. It's not comfortable to have a high fever, and there's a slight chance of kids getting febrile seizures (although most are not actually that bad), but we do more harm ot ourselves for little comfort or a complete lack of soicism.
I get headaches sometimes. I know 200mg of ibuprofen can help me, but I chose not to. Pain is part of reality. If we mask it, we have little incentive to address the root cause.
I had COVID-19 in August this year. I had a 39.5°C fever for 2 days, then it subsided for 7-8 more days - I didn't take any antipyretic. You know, you can actually tolerate it if you accept it as something normal. And it's also a great experience to actually learn to know when you have a fever - you don't need a thermometer even.
Pyrotherapy. The idea of fighting untreatable (at the time) illnesses by inducing a fever in the patient. There's actually a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotherapy
As in deliberately infect a syphilis patient with malaria, which can give you a very high fever. The first time I heard about that one was in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, turns out it was one of the non-fictional parts of the books (which were a mix of historical facts and fiction).
Quote: "In general, the body temperature was maintained at 41 °C (105 °F).[1] Many diseases were treated by this method in the first half of the 20th century."
The malaria variant was not the common variant, that was saved for extreme cases, apparently (e.g. Syphilis). Mostly it was hot baths and the like.
I, for one, will stick to my near-daily sauna sessions.
I don't take any antipyretics, nor have I given to my kids, unless the fever is 39-39.5°C and climbing. Otherwise, you're sabotaging your own innate immune system!
I do the same. Fever is a feature, unless the infection is so pervasive the fever itself becomes a health hazard (at which point you need to see a doctor ASAP, not lower your fever)
Taking an antipyretic for a regular flu completely defeats the purpose. Let your immune system do its thing, it is pretty good at it.
Sabotaging is much too strong a word. The fever is not essential to the immune system. If taking down the fever makes it easier to cook food or do something else that is important to you, go ahead.
We have had fever suppressors for so long now that we know they are not harmful to the immune system in any meaningful way.
A fever should be temporary. If you go several days with 39 C then something is wrong and you should absolutely seek medical help. People used to die from simple bacterial infections before we had antibiotics.
And be mindful of the children! Small children are wired somewhat differently and you should be much more careful with them. 39 C in a newborn can be life threatening.
Fever is thought to contribute to host defense, as the reproduction of pathogens with strict temperature requirements can be hindered, and the rates of some important immunological reactions are increased by temperature. Fever has been described in teaching texts as assisting the healing process in various ways, including:
- increased mobility of leukocytes
- enhanced leukocyte phagocytosis
- decreased endotoxin effects
- increased proliferation of T cells
[...]
Studies using warm-blooded vertebrates suggest that they recover more rapidly from infections or critical illness due to fever.
---
Fever makes your immune system work better, and many pathogens don't like the higher temps.
Right. But it's not essential to the immune system. The immune system doesn't shut down completely just because you temporarily bring the fever down.
It's one thing to avoid overusing painkillers, and while I personally can appreciate that sentiment, over the counter painkillers are pretty well tested and you should not be afraid to use them, without reasonable limits. Denying children painkillers when they ask for them sounds dangerously close to going a step too far!
There are no studies that indicate you can "harden" your immune system by denying pain killers in the long run. You shouldn't be afraid of painkillers, just as you shouldn't be afraid of having fever.
It's a numbers game - even if you kill only a part of the pathogen with fever, it actually makes a big difference in the end, since in the initial phase it grows exponentially. Also, another indirect benefit is that when you have a fever, you tend to rest more rather than pretending everything is rosy, and when your immune system works best, it is when you sleep. In the States, I've seen many irresponsible sick people who go to work and take Tylenol so that they can cope better at work, essentially spreading the disease.
In many cultures, instead of giving you Paracetamol/Acetaminophen at the onset of fever, they would actually warm you up to give it a boost.
I know, stoicism is gone - people can't tolerate any pain, any discomfort, any trouble nowadays.
That's a vaccine for one strain: H5N1. I'm sure birds have many more strains and variants of virus. I'm sure a proper virologist can dive in here ...
I think people assume that a fever is caused by an infection but my understanding is that a fever is a response to the infection. The body raises its temperature deliberately to destroy a viral infection, even though it is unpleasant, as well as deploying the other defenses.
It seems, according to this article, that these bird 'flu infections are resistant to being cooked by a fever and that makes them more dangerous - we've lost a defense strategy.
Not a proper virologist, but H5N5 killed a person in Washington state recently.
There will likely be some cross protection on the H5 antigen, just as some regular flu shots provide cross protection against the N1 antigen of H5N1. (The H5 and N1 subtypes won't be completely matched, respectively, but you don't always need complete matching for some protection.)
Maybe it'd then be a good idea to have labs secretly funded by a joint venture half-US, half-Chinese, in China, doing gain-of-function research on these?
And then maybe that if some shit hits the fan, it'd then be a great idea to ask someone neck and tie deep in that funding and in that research to act as the "expert" to tell us if we should put masks on or not once it leaks?
I'd imagine that in the event of a Bird Flu pandemic, a vaccine would be developed and dispatched quite quickly, unlike with COVID, where during the early days experts were saying it was possible we'd never get a vaccine.
If COVID demonstrated anything it is exactly the contrary, that we should not count on readily available vaccines, and rather should have *systemic* responses ready to be implemented when needed (including vaccine development, but not only). Every new virus is a new challenge and a vaccine may take time to develop. Meanwhile isolation protocols, masks etc. are all sensible actions. Prevention and prior investments into a wide range of measures, from education, to health protocols development and to vaccine technology research are all necessary to have these systemic responses ready in place.
The US has antivaxxers in charge of health policy now, and they have specifically targeted mRNA vaccines with funding cuts. They seem likely to hinder rather than help any near future vaccines development program in response to a pandemic.
The reason they said it wasn't possible wasn't that making a vaccine was physically impossible. They said a vaccine might never arrive because vaccines have such a poor track record against respiratory viruses. The assumption the (cough) experts were making was that nobody would roll out a useless vaccine.
But they would! The COVID vaccine was advertised as 95% effective after two shots and done, and within months it was at negative effectiveness and people were being told to take infinity boosters. That's the exact scenario originally anticipated. The only mistake was assuming the regulators wouldn't sign off on a useless vaccine backed by dodgy trials. We were told to take our medicine anyway and then the vaccine boosters tried to gaslight everyone into thinking it was a great success even as millions of people saw friends and family who'd taken five shots come down with Omicron for the third time in six months.
It doesn't work because respiratory viruses mutate very quickly. They evolve around both natural immunity and vaccines very fast, but vaccination triggers population lock so the effect is worse than just letting people fight it off naturally where you get more natural variability in defenses.
That's why if you look carefully at the data for flu shots they don't work. They're reported as effective because the original specific virus goes away, but people still get flu and die at the same rate because "flu" is more than just one very specific virus. End effect on mortality is zero.
The reasoning behind this is that birds have higher body temperature in our fever range.
They put mice infected with a flu virus modified to have the bird variant of a gene in an oven and the virus indeed didn't degrade as much compared to the unmodified control.
Huh. I don’t know if I’m picking up what they’re putting down here, but it kind of sounds like suppressing fever e.g. with Tylenol would actually be bad for (normal) flu progression.
Fever helps against all kinds of illnesses but it can also be deadly, so having fever reducting medicine around is a smart precaution IMO. If you're otherwise healthy and are dealing with a mild seasonal infection and have got something important going on, I can see why people would choose to reduce symptoms at the cost of taking longer to recover.
Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
> Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
This is not specific to America; it's a thing in the entire Western world, and probably beyond. Because it's not like we have any other choice.
There is no slack in the system. Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year, and they prefer to save those up for when painkillers and cough medicine don't cut it anymore. Same with children, because a sick child staying home is usually equivalent to the parent taking a sick day themselves - either way, they're not at work.
We can talk about media or people going overboard once it becomes acceptable to skip work for a week because of sick kid, or in order to not get everyone in the office sick too.
>Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year
Sick days are unlimited in my country (and of course don’t count as vacation or similar).
I think this is relatively standard for European countries, though not 100% sure.
They may be on paper, but I can't imagine taking one every time you have a runny nose or a sore throat. Everyone from your employer to social insurance[0] will start looking at you funny. It's just unexpected, even though it's how you're supposed to be handling infectious diseases to prevent spread.
--
[0] - Or whoever is backing the free healthcare in your country.
Yes, that much is true. Remote working for those in between cases is accepted, but it does reduce the practice to the luckier subset of office workers.
But flu isn’t just a cold, it’s a serious disease. If they are sick to the point they have fever then they can’t really afford to not rest as it has a cost in the form of longer health debt. And even short term, by letting the fever run and resting and being 100% operational can be more productive than being a zombie on medications for weeks.
Not to mention it is an infectious disease that they will spread to other people if they go to work.
By the time they can tell it's "the flu" and not just "a cold", they've been infecting everyone for days already.
Not to mention, cold is an infectious disease too (it's literally the same disease, just a weaker variant caused by strains that evolved their potency away), it too will spread to other people if they go to work.
> Not to mention, cold is an infectious disease too (it's literally the same disease, just a weaker variant caused by strains that evolved their potency away)
“The cold” is actually any of a wide variety of different viral diseases (caused by various forms of rhinovirus, coronavirus [0], and, I think, a few other kinds of viruses), none of which are flu (influenza virus). It is not a less potent flu.
[0] so calling COVID-19 “a bad cold” is correct from a certain point of view, despite being substantively misleading.
Fair, I was under the impression that some strains of influenza viruses are in the mix too, but apparently they're distinct and not part of the cocktail (surprising, given how the other viruses found themselves bucketed like this - they evolved to lose potency over time; I'd expect influenza strains would be on the same trajectory).
Still, my main point holds - you usually can't tell by symptoms alone, whether it's a common cold or a flu. In case you get severe symptoms, by the time you can, you've already been infectious for some time. So either way, the right time to call in sick is when you first notice the early symptoms - stuffy/runny nose, cough, headache, elevated body temperature. But obviously nobody does that, because it would mean calling in sick at random a dozen or more times per year.
Post-lockdown COVID was the only time I know of in the last few decades, and a brief time indeed, when it was socially acceptable to react to potential symptoms at the right time.
Some people colloquially call a cold "the flu", but the common cold is very different to influenza. Please don't spread misinformation.
People mix common cold with flu all the time. If you have the flu you usually can't even go out of bed, even with medication.
"Common cold" is what we call flu/COVID/bunch of other stuff when symptoms aren't severe enough to bother checking. There is no "cold virus", as cold isn't a specific sickness but a destination; it's a catch-all for respiratory pathogens that evolve their potency away.
By the time someone is able to tell they have "the flu", they should've been on a sick leave for 2-3 days already.
> Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year
I believe it's true in the USA, but not necessarily in Europe. It's quite normal that you have two infections a year, plus sometimes your kid catches something at a completely different time, so the law protects you in these situations.
Yes, but there's what the law says, and there's process, and there's expectations.
You can't just take a legal sick day each time you have a runny nose (good luck finding a doctor that fast), and even if you could, you'd quickly stand out. "Two infections a year" is an average for adults who power through remaining ones with painkillers and cough meds; if they didn't, we'd be talking 5+, probably closer to 10 if they have kindergarten-age kids.
Sounds like you have a pretty terrible employer. Of course there's an expectation that you're not taking sick leave for every minor cough or sniffle, but "powering through" infections is pretty absurd to expect from your employees.
It sounds like you just have a terrible employer. If I get the flu, I'm taking a few days off. If I feel poorly, I'm not working. Never been a problem with any employer. 5-10 sicks days a year is completely normal. You cannot be fired for this.
If you get the flu, and know it's a flu, you're a few days too late to take sick leave for it to be useful at preventing infecting your co-workers.
5-10 days of sick leave a year is perfectly normal, because that's how much people need to cover serious infections that cannot be easily powered through with meds.
> like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick.
Basically how I grew up. I took painkillers and throat lozenges in my backpack to school.
Due to a condition I was born with, I was raised the opposite. No over the counter medication my entire life, with some exceptions. I usually decline pain management in ER, for things like broken bones, but for surgeries and stuff of course I have no choice as I go under.
I will take what the doctor orders though, to treat illness and conditions though thankfully at this stage there hasn't been many instances. Usually that's antibiotics.
Broken bones? A broken femur or a shin is hell.
Yeah it was pretty painful at first and at different times. Never like in tears pain though, just very distracting. I have broken two fingers and two collarbones, at different times, and a toe! Both collarbones were fully smashed to bits but did not pierce the skin, I had bruising for months.
I have an above average tolerance but I think what really helps is pain management techniques, which I believe can help all of us at different times of need. Chronic pain is a bitch, which I have, and not everyone has pain that is reasonably manageable, but even prescribed pain meds are really going to mess with you and I think it is worth avoiding if possible and not inhumane.
Copying Google AI's response here as it's at least as good as what I was going to recall:
> Fever is a key part of the innate immune system, acting as a protective response to infection by raising the body's temperature. This increase in temperature inhibits the growth of many pathogens, enhances the activity of immune cells like leukocytes, and improves the effectiveness of the adaptive immune response.
My Vietnamese in-laws commonly make a sweat tent to shorten the duration of sickness. I can't say if it works, but it's something I intend to try next time I'm sick.
When I feel like I have a virus I usually put on my hoody which I only wear when I feel ill and a scarf and before going to bed I drink a lot of herb or ginger tea (like two cans)
this is will heat up your body and you get some night sweats, this usually helps reducing the sick time.
I can't say if it actually helps, but its become a ritual for that occasion
Well, yes?
Very simplified... It is a suppressor of symptoms like pain and fever which are the bodies way of letting you know something is damaged and killing off unknown foreign bodies respectively.
Suppressing symptoms does not remove the cause and is not a cure.
I think what they're saying here is that you're not just suppressing a symptom, you're suppressing a sickness fighting mechanism.
He said that.
Fever isn't just a symptom. It's a defense mechanism. The idea is that use of antipyretic drugs may make the infection worse.
The sentence is constructed, weirdly, but it's meant to say that fever is "killing off unknown foreign bodies"
Pain being a way to let you know that something is damaged is close to true--close enough not to quibble with. But fever is not a way to let you know that foreign bodies are being killed off--that's his claim, and it's wrong.
> But fever is not a way to let you know that foreign bodies are being killed off--that's his claim, and it's wrong.
querez's point is that the sentence is meant to be parsed as:
> pain and fever which are the bodies way of <<letting you know something is damaged>> and <<killing off unknown foreign bodies>> respectively
So the claim is that fever is the body's way of killing off unknown foreign bodies, not the body's way of letting you know something is killing off unknown foreign bodies.
Correct!
I will edit my previous comment to make it more clear.
(Edit: Nvm, I'm not able to edit that comment any more, I've still not understood the edit-function here)
It is, as others have pointed out.
Although, we’re very unusual humans in the grand scheme of things. So using medication might be reasonable. The brain might start taking damage around 104F. That was probably a good tradeoff for a peasant farmer (our ancestors, on average). Most of us nowadays just think for a living, not such a good tradeoff for us. Take the fever suppressant, what’s the worst that’ll happen if you miss an extra day of work?
You do not get brain damage from fever.
https://www.seattlechildrens.org/conditions/a-z/fever---myth...
It's a fairly common notion to "sweat out" a flu. Stay in bed, wrap yourself up in lots of blankets and just sweat the damn thing out. High body heat kills the virus.
So it would make sense that drugs like tylenol/paracetamol would make you feel better, but would keep the flu alive in you for longer.
Anecdotally, I have used this technique many times, also drinking hot tea besides being wrapped in blankets, and at least for me it has worked much better than when taking any kind of antipyretics.
There are cases when the fever is dangerously high and antipyretics are necessary. But when the fever is supportable it certainly accelerates the healing.
That's what we do here (Czech republic), we don't take meds until the fever goes over 39°C (above 40 you are looking for trouble). You lay in bed and drink enough to compensate for sweating. My grandma would make you onion tea.
Isn’t it common knowledge that adults heal quicker with higher fever, and that suppressing fever is needed only if it reaches dangerous levels (in contrast to children where fever can be dangerous at lower levels)?
This is common old wive's tale. Fever itself is not dangerous in adults or children.
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/127/3/e20103...
> There is no evidence that children with fever, as opposed to hyperthermia, are at increased risk of adverse outcomes such as brain damage.10,12,24–26 Fever is a common and normal physiologic response that results in an increase in the hypothalamic “set point” in response to endogenous and exogenous pyrogens.12,26 In contrast, hyperthermia is a rare and pathophysiologic response with failure of normal homeostasis (no change in the hypothalamic set point) that results in heat production that exceeds the capability to dissipate heat.12,26 Characteristics of hyperthermia include hot, dry skin and central nervous system dysfunction that results in delirium, convulsions, or coma.26 Hyperthermia should be addressed promptly, because at temperatures above 41°C to 42°C, adverse physiologic effects begin to occur.10,12,27 Studies of health care workers, including physicians, have revealed that most believe that the risk of heat-related adverse outcomes is increased with temperatures above 40°C (104°F), although this belief is not justified.7,26,28–30 A child with a temperature of 40°C (104°F) attributable to a simple febrile illness is quite different from a child with a temperature of 40°C (104°F) attributable to heat stroke.
You cannot get a dangerously high fever. You can get a dangerously high body temperature from heat stroke, or I suppose you could have some rare hypothalmic disease. But fever as an immune response is not dangerous to adults or children.
Our pediatrician didn’t want us to give Tylenol unless the fever was over 99.5 and not to bring them in unless it was over 101 with Tylenol.
kind of sounds like suppressing fever e.g. with Tylenol would actually be bad for (normal) flu progression.
you're just the tip of the iceberg my friend - did you know "horse dewormer" ivermectin has long been given to humans - for decades - to treat parasitic infections?
It may go further than that:
> Fever is used by organisms as diverse as fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals (see for reference Basu and Srivastava, 2003). Since fever is metabolically expensive, it must provide substantial advantage to the host. Surprisingly little is known about immunological effects mediated by fever, a lack of understanding that might be attributable in part to the common ignorance in clinical practice with respect to benefits fever might provide. Post-operative infections can be prolong survival: patients developing empyema after lung cancer surgery have improved 5-year survival (50% (n = 18) vs 22% (n = 411)) (Ruckdeschel et al, 1972). In this light, it seems unfortunate that fever is usually suppressed in hospital routine.
> The phenomenon of spontaneous regression and remission from cancer has been observed by many physicians and was described in hundreds of publications. However, suggestive clues on cause or trigger are sparse and not substantiated by much experimental evidence. [...] At least in a larger fraction of cases a hefty feverish infection is linked with spontaneous regression in time and is investigated as putative trigger.
> Professor Busch in 1868 introduced the infection of cancer patients by purpose as a novel strategy to treat cancer. He achieved a dramatic regression with his first patient using live Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, the pathogen leading to erysipelas, published in the German Journal ‘Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift’ (Busch, 1868). Beginning in 1891, this strategy was exploited by Coley, who had some reading knowledge of German (Hall, 1998). Coley systematically applied Streptococcus pyogenes extracts – later called ‘Coley’s toxin’ – to cancer patients and achieved a remarkable rate of regressions. A retrospective compilation of cases considered inoperable at the time of treatment between 1891 and 1936, which was conducted by Wiemann and Starnes (1994, Table 2), determined a remission rate of 64% (108/170) and a 5-year survival rate of larger than 44%. Coley used to inject his extract once or twice a week over a period ranging from a few weeks to several months. His method became quite famous and was tested on hundreds of patients by him and contemporary physicians, but overshadowed by the development of X-ray treatment which was regarded to be much more powerful and of broader applicability.
> Since cancer is usually a slowly progressing disease with occasionally long periods of dormancy, putative beneficial fever effects should also precipitate as preventive efficacy. This can indeed be found. In a cohort of 603 melanoma patients compared to 627 population controls, an inverse correlation was found between melanoma risk and number of recorded infections on the one hand and between melanoma risk and fever height on the other hand, leading to a combined reduction of melanoma risk of about 40% for people with a history of three or more infections with high fever above 38.51C (Koelmel et al, 1999). Mastrangelo et al (1998) report a striking inverse correlation between the number of infections and mortality from tumours in Italy in the period 1890 –1960: every 2% reduction in the number of infectious diseases was followed by a 2% increase in tumours about 10 years later.
https://www.nature.com/articles/6602386.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16444847/
You want your immune system to simmer, not to boil.
I know someone who doesn't get fever. When he gets sick with regular cold or fly it's much longer and worse than for anyone else I know.
Most people don't get a significant fever when infected with most common cold viruses.
"Regular cold or flu"
if I wasn't clear he basically does not get fever that's just it, the body don't do it.
You usually don't get a fever from a cold (except in Japanese anime), if there's a significant fever it's more likely to be a flu. Or, these days, could be Covid.
I wonder if Tryptase affects Avian flu as well. Anyone know?
I'd also argue my partner and I got Avian flu one Xmas from eating free range eggs when there was an Avian flu pandemic up the road from them in Norfolk and the British Govt ordered culls.
Tryptase:
"A striking finding was decreased tryptase content in mast cells with copper overload, whereas copper starvation increased tryptase content." [1]
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5728160/
"Influenza A viruses are negative-stranded RNA viruses. Like many other enveloped viruses, they code for a surface glycoprotein that must be cleaved by cellular proteases for activation. HA, a major influenza surface glycoprotein, is translated as a single protein, HA0. For viral activation, HA0 (assembled as trimers) must be cleaved by a trypsin-like serine endoprotease at a specific site, normally coded for by a single basic amino acid (usually arginine) between the HA1 and HA2 domains of the protein. After cleavage, the two disulfide-bonded protein domains produce the mature form of the protein subunits as a prerequisite for the conformational change necessary for fusion and hence viral infectivity" [2]
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC33880/
I also wonder, by virtue of being a single strand of RNA, how long does it take for mutations to make the virus no longer viable in the environment it resides in?
In other words is a this a 3-4day process of replication and mutation which in effect kills itself off, rendering the need for immune system response and cough, cold, flu rememdies nothing more than containment effects?
Well, most humans (unlike me) take Tylenol even with a "fever" of just 38°C/100.5°F, so what difference does it make?
Unlike us, the virus will replicate much more quickly in their bodies. It wont kill them, but will likely make the infection last longer.
Havent had a fever in many years, since taking flu and covid shots each year.
Well, if you let your innate immune system do its job, fever can actually kill many pathogens and also ramp up your immune system response. It's fascinating that human cells can survive at slightly higher temperatures than most pathogens, giving us an advantage. It's not comfortable to have a high fever, and there's a slight chance of kids getting febrile seizures (although most are not actually that bad), but we do more harm ot ourselves for little comfort or a complete lack of soicism.
I get headaches sometimes. I know 200mg of ibuprofen can help me, but I chose not to. Pain is part of reality. If we mask it, we have little incentive to address the root cause.
I had COVID-19 in August this year. I had a 39.5°C fever for 2 days, then it subsided for 7-8 more days - I didn't take any antipyretic. You know, you can actually tolerate it if you accept it as something normal. And it's also a great experience to actually learn to know when you have a fever - you don't need a thermometer even.
Pyrotherapy. The idea of fighting untreatable (at the time) illnesses by inducing a fever in the patient. There's actually a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotherapy As in deliberately infect a syphilis patient with malaria, which can give you a very high fever. The first time I heard about that one was in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, turns out it was one of the non-fictional parts of the books (which were a mix of historical facts and fiction).
Quote: "In general, the body temperature was maintained at 41 °C (105 °F).[1] Many diseases were treated by this method in the first half of the 20th century."
The malaria variant was not the common variant, that was saved for extreme cases, apparently (e.g. Syphilis). Mostly it was hot baths and the like.
I, for one, will stick to my near-daily sauna sessions.
Oh! Today's a good day for sauna.
Unlike you?
I don't take any antipyretics, nor have I given to my kids, unless the fever is 39-39.5°C and climbing. Otherwise, you're sabotaging your own innate immune system!
I do the same. Fever is a feature, unless the infection is so pervasive the fever itself becomes a health hazard (at which point you need to see a doctor ASAP, not lower your fever)
Taking an antipyretic for a regular flu completely defeats the purpose. Let your immune system do its thing, it is pretty good at it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever#Management
Sabotaging is much too strong a word. The fever is not essential to the immune system. If taking down the fever makes it easier to cook food or do something else that is important to you, go ahead.
We have had fever suppressors for so long now that we know they are not harmful to the immune system in any meaningful way.
A fever should be temporary. If you go several days with 39 C then something is wrong and you should absolutely seek medical help. People used to die from simple bacterial infections before we had antibiotics.
And be mindful of the children! Small children are wired somewhat differently and you should be much more careful with them. 39 C in a newborn can be life threatening.
> The fever is not essential to the immune system
Nonsense. From Wikipedia:
Fever is thought to contribute to host defense, as the reproduction of pathogens with strict temperature requirements can be hindered, and the rates of some important immunological reactions are increased by temperature. Fever has been described in teaching texts as assisting the healing process in various ways, including:
- increased mobility of leukocytes
- enhanced leukocyte phagocytosis
- decreased endotoxin effects
- increased proliferation of T cells
[...]
Studies using warm-blooded vertebrates suggest that they recover more rapidly from infections or critical illness due to fever.
---
Fever makes your immune system work better, and many pathogens don't like the higher temps.
> Fever makes your immune system work better,
Right. But it's not essential to the immune system. The immune system doesn't shut down completely just because you temporarily bring the fever down.
It's one thing to avoid overusing painkillers, and while I personally can appreciate that sentiment, over the counter painkillers are pretty well tested and you should not be afraid to use them, without reasonable limits. Denying children painkillers when they ask for them sounds dangerously close to going a step too far!
There are no studies that indicate you can "harden" your immune system by denying pain killers in the long run. You shouldn't be afraid of painkillers, just as you shouldn't be afraid of having fever.
It's a numbers game - even if you kill only a part of the pathogen with fever, it actually makes a big difference in the end, since in the initial phase it grows exponentially. Also, another indirect benefit is that when you have a fever, you tend to rest more rather than pretending everything is rosy, and when your immune system works best, it is when you sleep. In the States, I've seen many irresponsible sick people who go to work and take Tylenol so that they can cope better at work, essentially spreading the disease.
In many cultures, instead of giving you Paracetamol/Acetaminophen at the onset of fever, they would actually warm you up to give it a boost.
I know, stoicism is gone - people can't tolerate any pain, any discomfort, any trouble nowadays.
He is not like the others
I agree - stoicism is almost fully extinct. Modern people are a bunch of whiners.
There is a vaccine though.
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-prepares-five-million-vaccine-...
That's a vaccine for one strain: H5N1. I'm sure birds have many more strains and variants of virus. I'm sure a proper virologist can dive in here ...
I think people assume that a fever is caused by an infection but my understanding is that a fever is a response to the infection. The body raises its temperature deliberately to destroy a viral infection, even though it is unpleasant, as well as deploying the other defenses.
It seems, according to this article, that these bird 'flu infections are resistant to being cooked by a fever and that makes them more dangerous - we've lost a defense strategy.
Not a proper virologist, but H5N5 killed a person in Washington state recently.
There will likely be some cross protection on the H5 antigen, just as some regular flu shots provide cross protection against the N1 antigen of H5N1. (The H5 and N1 subtypes won't be completely matched, respectively, but you don't always need complete matching for some protection.)
Kurzgesagt's fever video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cRZOUcpiOxY
Edit: This video asserts that the heat shock protein excess is what reveals an infected cell to the immune system.
Everyone pops a Tylenol/advil when they get a fever. Can’t be that bad.
Maybe it'd then be a good idea to have labs secretly funded by a joint venture half-US, half-Chinese, in China, doing gain-of-function research on these?
And then maybe that if some shit hits the fan, it'd then be a great idea to ask someone neck and tie deep in that funding and in that research to act as the "expert" to tell us if we should put masks on or not once it leaks?
I'd imagine that in the event of a Bird Flu pandemic, a vaccine would be developed and dispatched quite quickly, unlike with COVID, where during the early days experts were saying it was possible we'd never get a vaccine.
If COVID demonstrated anything it is exactly the contrary, that we should not count on readily available vaccines, and rather should have *systemic* responses ready to be implemented when needed (including vaccine development, but not only). Every new virus is a new challenge and a vaccine may take time to develop. Meanwhile isolation protocols, masks etc. are all sensible actions. Prevention and prior investments into a wide range of measures, from education, to health protocols development and to vaccine technology research are all necessary to have these systemic responses ready in place.
The US has antivaxxers in charge of health policy now, and they have specifically targeted mRNA vaccines with funding cuts. They seem likely to hinder rather than help any near future vaccines development program in response to a pandemic.
But the current administration is antivax so…
Something I love to point out to Trump supporters is that he is the one who fast tracked the “clot shot”.
So was the one during COVID-19
Only after it made the vax.
The reason they said it wasn't possible wasn't that making a vaccine was physically impossible. They said a vaccine might never arrive because vaccines have such a poor track record against respiratory viruses. The assumption the (cough) experts were making was that nobody would roll out a useless vaccine.
But they would! The COVID vaccine was advertised as 95% effective after two shots and done, and within months it was at negative effectiveness and people were being told to take infinity boosters. That's the exact scenario originally anticipated. The only mistake was assuming the regulators wouldn't sign off on a useless vaccine backed by dodgy trials. We were told to take our medicine anyway and then the vaccine boosters tried to gaslight everyone into thinking it was a great success even as millions of people saw friends and family who'd taken five shots come down with Omicron for the third time in six months.
It doesn't work because respiratory viruses mutate very quickly. They evolve around both natural immunity and vaccines very fast, but vaccination triggers population lock so the effect is worse than just letting people fight it off naturally where you get more natural variability in defenses.
That's why if you look carefully at the data for flu shots they don't work. They're reported as effective because the original specific virus goes away, but people still get flu and die at the same rate because "flu" is more than just one very specific virus. End effect on mortality is zero.
Any source on these claims?
Research any history of the flu vaccines, Hoskins effect, why there's no vaccine against the common cold etc.
Can we simply remove fever and coughing somehow… super annoying and more dangerous than the virus themselves sometimes.
> Can we simply remove fever and coughing somehow… super annoying and more dangerous than the virus themselves sometimes.
You're basically asking to become a bat
So we can also fly? Sign me up!
And echolocation! Time to form a queue.
> Teach Yourself to Echolocate A beginner’s guide to navigating with sound.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-echolocate#
Fruitbat!
I do like some fruit.