A flu holocaust that rocked the world and is still with us

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Maybe it’s the same every Winter, but it seems over recent weeks that almost everyone I’ve met and worked with have been laid low with a dose of either the flu or a heavy cold.

I’m always loathe to say that I’ve avoided the scourge in case that I’m tempting fate but over recent years the precautionary flu jab has been pencilled into the October diary.

In younger years there was always the temptation to be gung ho about such things as flu injections but it does seem to make the most perfect sense to get a little jab in the shoulder, that takes about the best part of two seconds to administer, in return for avoiding a week or more of abject misery.

Some of my colleagues seem to have taken several weeks to shake off the virus that seems to have been especially vicious this year and that already has claimed the lives of up to 22 people, according to the latest HSE data.

Flu, or to use its proper title influenza, is a viral infection that initially attacks your lungs and upper airways, but being a virus, it is bullet-proof against antibiotics, so there is little choice but to rest and take in plenty of fluids during its peak strike period.

It is highly contagious and one of the reasons why it may spread more rapidly during the Winter is that during the colder season, people do tend to be closer proximity to one another. During this time of year, we will tend to breathe in a lot of other people’s breath and air droplets that carry the flu virus.

Have you ever noticed walking down a city street close to someone who is smoking and how at times you realise that you are getting the scent of cigarette smoke in your nostrils.

The scent of the smoke tells us that but this indicates that every day, unpalatable as it may be, we do tend to breathe in a lot of other people’s recycled air.

Put a lot of people together in places like schools, pubs, buses, restaurants, sporting events and even family get-togethers and the conditions are pretty much perfect for spreading the flu virus. Recycled air in aeroplanes is a cesspit for the virus.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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