Among the victims of the influenza epidemic in China are two children under the age of 15; the doctors repeat it every year, a little in the desert, the flu remains a deadly disease which kills in our country much more than the road… Admittedly, the victims are essentially weakened people: elderly people but also chronically ill people, a category to which no age of life escapes. All intensive care units fear her.
The flu is a serious illness. Especially not trivial.
Few people escape it throughout their life, but very quickly forget the state of deep discomfort it causes, because the flu heals without sequelae. The real flu is a moment when the body undergoes a real pounding, by the virus which reproduces at breakneck speed in the body. Fortunately, he is rather fragile and very sensitive to fever which is our main defense, a little less when it comes to coronavirus. It leaves a tired body for long weeks.
Antibiotics are useless
The flu is a virus, therefore insensitive to antibiotics. These are only prescribed if a bacterium takes advantage of the body’s weak state to superinfect it.
If this is not the case, abundant drinks, paracetamol… and bed rest are enough!
There is not one, but several flu viruses
This is the race against time in which disease specialists engage each year: to observe and predict the mutations of this very fickle virus. From year to year, the viruses look the same… except that sometimes one becomes very different. This is the case with this coronavirus and it is at this time that we fear a global epidemic, facing an enemy that we did not expect and that, above all, we know little about.
Having the flu protects against the flu… but badly!
An attack by a virus provokes the production by the body of specific defences, which explains why we do not have two real flus in the same year and that we are protected against the virus the following year if it does not undergoes no major changes. This is generally the case and therefore requires a new vaccination. Those who are affected by what they call a “second flu”, are affected by what is called a pseudo flu syndrome, that is to say an infection that resembles the flu. They are, in fact, the victims of a virus other than that of the flu.
You have to get vaccinated every year
Each year, the viruses that reach France are either the same as the previous year or carry a certain mutation. This explains why the composition of the vaccine changes a little, but also why each year, the protection is more and more effective for those who are vaccinated every year. This is undoubtedly one of the effects of generalized and free vaccination among seniors, which explains why severe flu affects increasingly young adults.
Fragile children should be vaccinated
There is no doubt on the subject: all children who suffer from chronic illnesses, who have respiratory problems, what are called “fragile” children, must be vaccinated. Which is theoretically the rule in France.
The United States vaccinates all children
American pediatricians recommend vaccination against influenza from the age of 6 months, to protect them, but also with the hope that the importance of the disease will decrease over time.
Not all flu viruses are created equal
Each year, the “final” virus is always a good or bad surprise depending on the “virulence” of the almost constant mutations.
We must fear the “nasty” virus
It is not the classic flu that terrorizes infectious disease specialists today, but rather the imminence of a diabolical marriage. That of strength and the traveler. The force is the bird flu virus, a killing machine that nature confines to the organism of a few resistant birds, but which sometimes, for reasons that are not well known – promiscuity, unusual manipulations – performs a remarkable passage in man. With appalling consequences: mortality close to 100% and maximum contagiousness. Fortunately, it is a fragile and homebody killer. The traveler, among viruses, you know him well. It’s the flu. Fickle, he loves free union. This is why it is never the same from one year to the next and why each fall, we must re-vaccinate. He is above all an inexhaustible backpacker whose annual world tour results in tens of millions of human contaminations which are always unpleasant, sometimes serious and fatal.
The microbe loves perfect hugs. The result is a new virus that takes on the qualities of both parents. So if one day the avian flu meets the traditional flu, unites and then passes into humans, it is a traveling killer, a weapon of mass destruction which will be about to break out on the planet.
Science fiction? Alas no. This episode of the coronavirus is an illustration of this. These weddings are, it seems, in the process of happening with as witness of marriage… a pig! It is indeed by passing through the intermediary of the pig, an organism close to that of man, that the virus learns to colonize and destroy us. His apprenticeship finished, he only has to undertake his mortal world tour.
A scenario feared by the World Health Organization for several years, followed today by Chinese doctors who show that to extinguish an epidemic of a few thousand cases, they are ready to put a population equal to that of France in quarantine. The forecasts, if this diabolical marriage gives rise to a virus, are, in the event of an epidemic, several hundred thousand deaths, just for our country.
Remember, the WHO says so. Scientists who have rather the reputation of wielding the language of wood. Their frankness today sends shivers down the spine. It must be said that history is there to remind them that one of the last marriages of the flu with a Spanish woman caused, in 1919 and the following years, nearly 50 million deaths on our planet.
Doctor Jean-Francois Lemoine
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