Cold and Flu

HIV attacks helper T cells that are trying to fight infection, rather than attacking healthy body cells like a cold virus does.

HIV attacks lymphocytes directly.

Only if the swollen tonsils and sore throat are caused by a bacterial infection. Antibiotics (such as Amoxicillin) can not and will not have any effect whatsoever on viral infections. This is why people cannot and should not treat themselves with antibiotics. Get an accurate diagnosis from a doctor.

That is unlikely to be the cause but not impossible. Obstetricians and gynecologists recommend that women who are pregnant or intending to get pregnant should have flu shots. They have been proven safe and effective over decades of use even in pregnant women. See the related links below for more information.

Flu can be both. A flu epidemic is when the incident rate (number of people being infected) substantially what is expected based on previous experience. A flu pandemic is an epidemic that has spread through human populations across a large area.

Swine Flu is a world wide disease and has been officially called a pandemic.

I had some grapefruit because I learned it detoxifies the liver and I had milk with 1/2 a teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon turmeric, a sprinkle of flax seeds and some honey. It doesn't taste the best because of the turmeric but it helps with a cold.

Yes, you can! Bronchitis can also occur after the flu has passed or is passing, as your alveoli may not be able to get rid of all the germs from the flu and then it may develop into a bacterial infection... bronchitis. You could also contract the diseases separately!

Yes. 1-2 days before you feel symptoms you could be shedding virus particles that infect others. The precautions for prevention of the spread of infectious diseases must be followed at all times and in all seasons. This includes proper frequent hand washing, avoiding touching your eyes, mouth or nose, remembering to get your flu vaccination each year, staying at least 6 feet away from someone ill, coughing and sneezing into a tissue that is immediately thrown away, staying home when you are sick, and other ways to protect yourself and others. A more complete list of ways to protect yourself is in the related questions section for this question.

More details on how long you are infectious:

Adults shed influenza virus from the day before symptoms begin through 5-10 days after illness onset. However, the amount of virus shed, and presumably infectivity, decreases rapidly by 3-5 days after onset in an experimental human infection model. Young children also might shed virus several days before illness onset, and children can be infectious for 10 or more days after onset of symptoms. Severely immunocompromised persons can shed virus for weeks or months.

There is actually some debate on this question. Some say yes, others say no. Part of the discrepancy here lies in the mode of kissing. A chaste kiss is unlikely to transfer any germs. However, whenever bodilly fluids are exchanged there is the possibility of transfer of germs.

There are different type of viruses that are responsible for cold. we can get cold virus from anywhere even at the door locks. Doors are the most common agents of some diseases because when we or anybody come out from outside we touches the doors without washing our hands.

so when we touch our doors ,then we should wash our hands.

It is possible but not very likely. See the related question below about how long a virus lives outside the body. It would be more on the pillow or pillow case instead of in a pillow. Ultra violet light "kills" many viruses, so if you are concerned and are unable to wash the pillow, then if you can set it out in the sunlight for several hours that will speed the process of inactivation of any viruses.

People think that you're sick when you sneeze because most people who have colds sneeze A LOT!!!! Not to mention that I've had one before!

Back a few hundred years, about the time on the Great Plague in England, when a person sneezed people would often say "God bless you". In the hope that the person would not have any desasterous illness. It is said even today by some of the older folk who still remember Chicken Pox, measles, diphthira and infantile paralasis.

Spanish flu if you mean the swine flu then i think it happened probably 2009.

Yes.

For the cough you can try stream or humidified air, over the counter cough preparations (the ones with antihistamines and decongestants are recommended) and treat the underlying cause. If you have a virus you mostly need to treat the symptoms and ride it out. If it is from bacteria that can be treated (but this is a small minority of cases) and if you are smoking you can stop.

If you are wheezing, which can also cause a cough by itself, there really are not a lot of effective home remedies and so you should see your doctor for prescription medication.

First off, I am not a doctor. However, if you do not regularly wash your hands and regularly touch your mouth and/or nose, you have a higher chance of picking up the virus (or viri) that cause the common cold. If you have children and eat and drink after them, you are more likely to catch a cold since children are notorious for touching everything they can get their little hands on. If you do not get enough sleep, are under much stress, or if you do not eat well-balanced nutritional meals, your body is less able to fight off incoming germs that cause colds and flu.

No. Only penicillin V or Azthromycin should be used in adequete doses for adequete period. Strep throat will be alright in most of the cases of it's own, in three days, with out treatmnent. (Or inspite of your treatment, as teacher said.) But you may have one of the most deadly disease at hand. after three weeks. Rheumatic fever. If you do not treat it adequately. Cold and sour things will worsen the symptoms.

Yes

No one can give you a proper answer to that question as a percentage.

For one thing, we do not know all the kinds of germs.

For another, apart from the germs that we keep discovering, new kinds of germs keep developing in the process of evolution that is going on around us all the time. Some of the new germs we discover are bad and some are not so bad, or even important and good for us.

Thirdly, a germ that is bad in one place can be good in another place; for example some useful, or even essential, germs on your skin or in your gut, could be very bad news indeed if they got into your blood.

What is more, germs that are good at one time could be bad at another time.

However, we can say that the germs that we definitely do not want, such as some that cause some of our most dreadful diseases, either in human beings or in useful plants or in our animals, are only a tiny, tiny percentage of all the germs on the planet. There are perhaps a few thousand of the harmful kinds, while nobody knows how many millions there are around us, in the air, in the soil, in the see, and most of these have very little to do with us.

Apart from the really harmful germs, there are many more kinds of germs that either are very important to us, or that do things that are mostly useful, or things that can be useful if we deal with them the right way.

And apart from those there are even more that have very little to do with us and our concerns at all.

Still, we must generally assume that those germs that seem to live lives that have nothing to do with us, really are on balance good to have.

First of all we do not know how many useful things we might discover in a creature that we have not yet studied. That sort of thing happens all the time.

Secondly, whatever they are doing, they are doing something, something that is important to the world around them at least. They are keeping part of our world going, just by being there.

Looking at it that way, almost all germs, apart from perhaps a few hundred disease germs that attack us and attack things that matter to us, should be seen as good for us in one way or another. Even some disease germs really are very useful, such as Bacillus thuringiensis that we use for killing harmful insects, and the myxomatosis virus that has helped to control the rabbit plague in Australia.

yes of cource but people that are handicap or people with heart deasease have a better chance of getting it

No. See the related questions below for a link to the question and answer about the ingredients of the Swine Flu vaccine.

To continue to replicate and exist, a flu virus must be in a host animal's cells. They can be grown in cultures (and eggs) for creating vaccines, but need a living host for long term activity and to "live".

The latest research indicates that the main reason is that cold and flu viruses prefer it dry in their atmosphere. The lower the absolute humidity is, the more active they become. See below in the related questions for more information on these relatively new findings.

Aspirin should not be given to children because of concerns about Reye's syndrome

No, there is no medical information that would attribute it to a flu vaccination. Flu vaccines have been made the same way and used for several decades with very few side effects or problems. Specialists are still working to determine exactly what causes this disorder with dementia and other debilitating symptoms.

See the related questions below for more information.

There were four manufacturers' products approved for use by the US FDA and CDC:
Melbourne-based CSL Ltd.; Novartis AG based in Basel, Switzerland; Sanofi Pasteur of Sanofi-Aventis SA, based in Paris; and MedImmune, LLC, the Maryland US based Subsidiary of London's AstraZeneca. GlaxoSmithKline has not yet had approval for their vaccine in the US but it was approved in Europe as was a product made by Novartis. A third vaccine by Baxter did not pass the European committee's approval process but it is still being considered.