{"id":730,"date":"2009-02-16T09:05:30","date_gmt":"2009-02-16T13:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/?p=730"},"modified":"2009-02-16T09:06:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-16T13:06:00","slug":"flu-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/?p=730","title":{"rendered":"Flu Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tennessean reports today<\/a> that the flu season "has been unusually light this year," with only "21 laboratory-confirmed cases" thus far.<\/p>\n

My first question is, whose laboratory are they counting?  <\/p>\n

I took Gamma to her pediatrician on Thursday, because she woke up quite sick with flu-like symptoms.  The scary one though, was her pitiful complaint of how much it hurt<\/em> to cough.  Gamma doesn’t complain much, and really has to be made to stay home from school even when she really is too sick to go.<\/p>\n

The doctor ran two tests: one for flu, and another for a bacterial infection that has been causing walking pneumonia in a lot of kids locally.  Both came back positive, but we got her on Tamiflu (to shorten the flu) and antibiotics (for the bacterial infection, whose name I can’t remember) in time to shut both down in a relatively short time.  Thankfully, she’s all better now and back to school today.<\/p>\n

So, does the Tennessee Health Department <\/a>only count cases that are analyzed in their own laboratory, or do they collect information from the many doctors around the state who do run lab tests to make a definite diagnosis?  <\/p>\n

It seems really hard for me to believe that there were only 12 confirmed cases last year, and I’m afraid that such a benign-sounding number could lull some busy parents into letting their children "tough it out," sending sick kids on to school.  That’s not fair to the sick ones, nor to their teachers and classmates.<\/p>\n

Flu season may be running late, but it’s here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tennessean reports today that the flu season "has been unusually light this year," with only "21 laboratory-confirmed cases" thus far. My first question is, whose laboratory are they counting?  I took Gamma to her pediatrician on Thursday, because she … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":732,"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions\/732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}