Misconceptions about the Flu (Source: CBC News)
Each flu season, usually from October to March, the disease cuts a swath through workplaces, schools and hospital emergency rooms.
Yet despite its big impact, the flu is poorly understood by most Canadians. We think of it as a nuisance, like the snow. But it’s much more than that.
Here are the top 10 misconceptions about the flu.
1) No one ever died from the flu.
Wrong. Although statistically the flu is unlikely to kill young, healthy individuals, it’s still the leading infectious cause of hospitalization and death in Canada. That’s because it attacks and weakens the elderly and the ill… The flu will kill about 4,500 Canadians in this year alone. That number climbs to 6,000 if you include those who will die from complications…
2) For most people it’s not a serious illness.
That depends how you define serious. The flu makes about five million Canadians sick every year – that’s one in every six of us. If you’re one of the unlucky, you can count on being off work for as much as a week and feeling pretty lousy for much longer than that… About 1.5 million workdays are lost each year and the estimated cost to the Canadian system – in terms of health care costs and lost productivity – is a cool $1 billion.
3) I’ve had the flu three times this year.
Fortunately, that’s just not the case. What you’ve probably had is a cold, or repeated colds – most people can expect to get two to four of them a year. Here’s what sets the flu apart from the common cold…