My son came home from school yesterday afternoon looking flat. He picked at dinner and went to bed early. The fever started overnight and was still high in the morning. I had seen posts about influenza A circulating online, and his symptoms lined up closely enough to make me suspicious. I asked whether anyone in his class had recently had a fever or a cold. He said two classmates had already been sent home with fevers the day before. That made it fairly clear he had caught something from school, though whether it is influenza A I still do not know.
The news reports about this season's influenza A include experts saying there is no fundamental difference between this year's strain and those of previous years, so there is no need for excessive worry. From what I understand and have read, I agree. During the three years of COVID, we protected ourselves very thoroughly: masks, disinfectant sprays, isolating the virus as completely as possible. In the process, our immune systems may have lost some sensitivity. When the immune system is less accustomed to outside viruses, influenza A can spread faster this year, which makes it feel more aggressive. I think that after two or three rounds of flu, people's immune systems will settle back into a normal rhythm. The immune system is a complicated system; it adapts to ordinary exposure. Unknown viruses and overprotection can both make it react badly.
Influenza A is a self-limiting illness. Usually, if you control the fever with the right medicine, the body recovers on its own. The worst case is someone with weak immunity who keeps running a fever; then antiviral drugs are needed, and oseltamivir is the usual choice for influenza A. As it turned out, we were late to the party. The pharmacies nearby had sold out of oseltamivir. It was like the rush on cold medicine last December: people are now stockpiling oseltamivir. Maybe this is a post-pandemic habit. At the slightest sign of trouble, everyone overreacts. Ibuprofen sold out. Cold medicine sold out. Montmorillonite powder sold out. Oseltamivir sold out. The contrast between that emotional overreaction and our sluggish immune systems is striking. Could this also be some kind of compensation mechanism in the human system?
Last year, a domestic listed company that makes oseltamivir saw its performance fall sharply. The reason was simply that during the three years of the pandemic, people did not get the flu, and revenue dropped by more than half. A few months later, oseltamivir was back on the upswing. Probably even the company did not see that coming.
My son could not go to school, so I asked his teacher for leave. The teacher required a hospital diagnosis certificate for the absence and a hospital recovery certificate before he could return. For a self-limiting illness, needing a hospital diagnosis to take sick leave is a way of backing up the reason for leave; it is distrust of the parent. Needing a hospital recovery certificate after recovery is a double distrust: distrust of the parent's judgment and distrust of the school's own management capacity. Is the purpose of the hospital certificate to shift the school's management responsibility onto the hospital?
If you are sick, you need a hospital certificate. If you are not sick, you also need a hospital certificate. In the middle moment when there is no hospital certificate, are you sick or not? Or is there an intermediate state in which you are both sick and not sick?
Do aftereffects count as a disease? If they do, then this is not a mild case. If they do not, why does it take so long to recover?