my best friend was right when she told me , "men are pigs !" 

Hey, not ALL men

I have had a pretty bad cold the past week and you would not BELIEVE the number of people who have asked if I had Swine Flu.  (FWIW I don't have a fever, or nausea, and Cipro is curing it, so NO)

Kinda scary to be trying to recover from a cold and every time I turn on the TV it is this swine flu thing, though...!

LisaFX
I'm not a immunologist but Cipro probably doesn't work for a cold. Colds are viruses and Cipro works on bacteria. Colds just run their course. Better to save the big guns for when you really need them.

Quote from: lisafx on May 02, 2009, 13:33

Hey, not ALL men

I have had a pretty bad cold the past week and you would not BELIEVE the number of people who have asked if I had Swine Flu.  (FWIW I don't have a fever, or nausea, and Cipro is curing it, so NO)

Kinda scary to be trying to recover from a cold and every time I turn on the TV it is this swine flu thing, though...!

LisaFX
I'm not a immunologist but Cipro probably doesn't work for a cold. Colds are viruses and Cipro works on bacteria. Colds just run their course. Better to save the big guns for when you really need them.

True Zeus , the SYMPTOMS are flu like, but the medium of "contagion"(spelling???) is dissimilar.

whatever , the man who molested that pig to infect it with swine flu ,  geesh...that dirty swine !   

so there again, you and lisa both women having the flu. not a single man here have it. so my best friend , she was right, "men are swines, they don't get get symptoms of swine flu especially at this time , only you ladies !"   

I was curious about why it was called swine flu and when I wiki'd it, I got a pretty scary definition:

Swine influenza (also called swine flu, pigfluenza, hog flu, and pig flu) refers to influenza caused by those strains of influenza virus that usually infect pigs and are called swine influenza virus (SIV).[1] Swine influenza is common in pigs in the midwestern United States (and occasionally in other states), Mexico, Canada, South America, Europe (including the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Italy), Kenya, Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and other parts of eastern Asia.[1]

Transmission of swine influenza virus from pigs to humans is not common and eating pork does not pose a risk of infection. When transmitted, it does not always cause human influenza and often, the only sign of infection is the presence of antibodies which are only detectable by laboratory tests. When transmission results in influenza in a human, it is called zoonotic swine flu. People who work with pigs, especially people with intense exposures, are at risk of catching swine flu. However, only about fifty such transmissions have been recorded since the mid-20th Century, when identification of influenza subtypes became possible. Rarely, these strains of swine flu can pass from human to human. In humans, the symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general, namely chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness and general discomfort.

The 2009 flu outbreak in humans that is widely known as "swine flu" is due to an apparently virulent new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 that was produced by reassortment from one strain of human influenza virus, one strain of avian influenza virus, and two separate strains of swine influenza. The origin of this new strain is unknown, and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reports that this strain has not been isolated in pigs.[2] It can be transmitted from human to human, an ability attributed to an as-yet unidentified mutation.[3] This 2009 H1N1 strain causes the normal symptoms of influenza, such as fever, coughing and headache.[4]

Pay particular attention to the sentence that says The origin of this new strain is unknown...that this strain has not been isolated in pigs.

And this from the CDC website:

Why is this new H1N1 virus sometimes called “swine flu”?
This virus was originally referred to as “swine flu” because laboratory testing showed that many of the genes in this new virus were very similar to influenza viruses that normally occur in pigs in North America. But further study has shown that this new virus is very different from what normally circulates in North American pigs. It has two genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia and avian genes and human genes. Scientists call this a “quadruple reassortant” virus.

Do pigs carry this virus and can I catch this virus from a pig?
At this time, there is no evidence that swine in the United States are infected with this new virus. However, there are flu viruses that commonly cause outbreaks of illness in pigs. Most of the time, these viruses do not infect people, but influenza viruses can spread back and forth between pigs and people.

Go ahead, call me a conspiracy theorist or just a plain old wacko, but it sounds like a little genetic modifying at the hands of humans going on.

Hope you feel better, lisafx. One of our engineers at work just got back from a week-long trip to China and he has been hacking and coughing and sneezing all week. We all thought the same thing about him...oh no, he has the swine flu and he brought across the ocean! But it appears to be a plain old, kick-ass cold from being on a transatlantic flight.

Dr. Clapper would like to weigh in here. Cipro is a heavy hitting antibiotic. Last I heard of it is when there were anthrax breakouts, it was used to treat that. 

I think the reason why all these germs and viruses are getting more and more difficult to combat is similar to the problem of bacterial soap,etc. It actually makes it worst for us, as these bugger eventually becoming adapted to these bacterial soap,etc.. and it literally useless.
Irony is the more progressive and affluent the country, the more these people get sick faster and easier. It 's all a case of our  immune system being suppressed by all these spray, and so called agents that we use to protect us. Good example is the montezuma's revenge that many North Americas are prone to, yet most of those born in poorer countries never have that problem . Surely something to ponder about next time we spend money on bacterial soap, and other antiseptics.