MONEY MORAL DILEMMA. Should you give up your night out due to swine flu?

VCE_in_Fornax

soco1 wrote: »

Flu always has and always will kill and the vaccine produced for the annual flu jab uses an educated guess as to what strains will be prevalent. It's nature's way and all comes down to survival of the fittest at the end of the day.

Yes I would use the tickets if I felt well enough to go.

here you go then, survival of the fittest it is.
Somehow I'm glad I'm not with you and all the other " I will get my money's worth at anybody's cost" MSEs in the "fittest" segment of the population...:rolleyes:

drifter410

It's this sort of Bloody minded attitude that is spreading this cursed flu.
If you think you have it, you should at least try to stay away from any chance of further spreading it. Think of others, not just your self.

dbfisokay

Feeling slightly achey, snuffley and a bit hot might well be swine flu symptoms but they are also symptoms of a multitude of health conditions such as hayfever or summer colds, so unless swine flu is formally diagnosed then all that is evident is that I feel slightly achey, snuffley and a bit hot.

As the chief concern seems to be infecting others, not my own misery, the symptoms clearly don't seem to be bad enough to make the choice obvious i.e. bad enough to put health before my money and stay at home.

The dilemma therefore seems to arise from not being sure about what is wrong with me. I could try to find out via an emergency doctor's appointment if available, thereby allowing me to make an informed choice. Without that information however and in light of the fact that my symptoms don't seem to be too bad, I would go but would take the precaution of not seezing or coughing into people's faces and discarding tissues responsibly. Public Health authorities might challenge this decision however if everyone who is feeling slightly achey, snuffley and a bit hot decided to isolate themselves then the repercussions to the Health of the Public could be more harmful than swine flu.

It's a case of not responding to a problem with a bigger problem or more specifically realising that society wide problems are not solved by individuals.. but that's another gripe...sneeeze carefully now!

supermonkey

Mummy_McThrifty wrote: »

I completely agree, our family is in a similar situation. How would someone feel if they passed it on to a vulnerable person who died as a result of their selfishness?

Exactly my point - I would guess some people here do not have children, and do not appreciate how much of a worry this can be.

MSE_Martin

It's interesting some people define a "flu" as serious and a "cold" as not.

Actually the derivation of the word "cold" is because you dont have a fever, so you are "cold".

Yet you can have a mild flu (minor symptons slightly raised temperature) and a severe cold (and obviously vice versa). Also when you have a flu it doesn't hit in a second, it can get progressively worse so in early days you could feel fine.

Hence the answer "if i had the flu i wouldn't feel well enough" doesn't really work - this is about a flu when you do feel well enough

JuliaJolie

pennypinchUK wrote: »

Anyone who really has the flu couldn't even contemplate venturing away from their bed in a darkened room, or away from a conveniently positioned bucket. So your body will tell you before you get to make the decision for yourself......

ITA. I had actual flu when I was 18 and the post-viral fatigue was so bad I had to be on anti-depressants (well, they were prescribed/suggested, but I chickened out of taking them). I wasn't actually emotionally depressed, I just had no energy whatsoever (clinical depression). I thought it was over once the actual sickness part finished but yeah, if I knew I had actual flu (not "a touch of the flu" - hate that phrase!), then I wouldn't be going anywhere past the bed.

JuliaJolie

sfry wrote: »

The most sensible post yet. Everyone else is thinking entirely of themselves and not whether they are likely to infect a more vulnerable person with a weaker immune system.

This. my little brother had a random, completely unexplained virus when he was about 14 and his liver had to be replaced with another lobe. He'd always been sick, had nose bleeds etc as a child but this baffled everyone. We live in Portsmouth but he had to be taken all the way to London to figure out what was wrong with him (fyi, my family don't use/can't afford private healthcare). He's fine now but is on immuno-suppressants, so I wouldn't dream of going anywhere if I actually had actual, proper flu for reasons other than I wasn't feeling up to it.

JuliaJolie

dbfisokay wrote: »

Feeling slightly achey, snuffley and a bit hot might well be swine flu symptoms but they are also symptoms of a multitude of health conditions such as hayfever or summer colds, so unless swine flu is formally diagnosed then all that is evident is that I feel slightly achey, snuffley and a bit hot.

As the chief concern seems to be infecting others, not my own misery, the symptoms clearly don't seem to be bad enough to make the choice obvious i.e. bad enough to put health before my money and stay at home.

The dilemma therefore seems to arise from not being sure about what is wrong with me. I could try to find out via an emergency doctor's appointment if available, thereby allowing me to make an informed choice. Without that information however and in light of the fact that my symptoms don't seem to be too bad, I would go but would take the precaution of not seezing or coughing into people's faces and discarding tissues responsibly. Public Health authorities might challenge this decision however if everyone who is feeling slightly achey, snuffley and a bit hot decided to isolate themselves then the repercussions to the Health of the Public could be more harmful than swine flu.

It's a case of not responding to a problem with a bigger problem or more specifically realising that society wide problems are not solved by individuals.. but that's another gripe...sneeeze carefully now!

AFAIK official advice was to stay home and ring a GP if you thought you had swine flu, but this leads to several laymen-types self-diagnosing (or in some cases using it to get out of work). There's a huge level of uncertainty here, especially as we're talking about a virus, which by definition cannot be treated with targeted meds and will continue to mutate into other strains...

soco1

FoxIII wrote: »

Third, I think the paranoia is a good thing - hand sanitizers have run out in all shops where I live, so obviously where we are we're going to wipe it out anyhoo :jQUOTE]

Do you not think that if viruses were that easy to kill HIV would have been eradicated years ago???

adiollie

i would go , but wear a mask and that would be enough to scare everyone so i could get to the front....:rotfl: