Human flu is a term used to refer to influenza cases caused by Orthomyxoviridae that are endemic to human populations (as opposed to infection relying upon zoonosis). It is an arbitrary categorization scheme, and is not associated with phylogenetics-based taxonomy. Human flu-causing viruses can belong to any of three major influenza-causing Orthomyxoviruses — Influenza A virus, Influenza B virus and Influenza C virus.
The annually updated trivalent influenza vaccine contains two hemagglutinin (HA) surface glycoprotein components from Influenza A virus strains and one from B influenza.
Most human flu is a non-pandemic flu that is slightly different from the main human flus that existed in last year’s flu season period. This type of flu is also called “common flu” or “seasonal flu” or “annual flu”. It causes yearly flu epidemics that are generally not deadly except to the very old or very young.
Human flu symptoms usually include fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, conjunctivitis and, in severe cases, severe breathing problems and pneumonia that may be fatal. The severity of the infection will depend to a large part on the state of the infected person’s immune system and if the victim has been exposed to the strain before, and is therefore partially immune.
All of these symptoms are characteristic of numerous infectious agents, so many that most diagnoses of human influenza technically are diagnoses of influenza-like illness (ILI) and most cases of ILI are not due to influenza.
[peeling paint off a pencil used for teething]
in a fluey oblivion – that weakness and stingy tingly skin surface of hurt while the bones diseasing ache and organs rot following torrential attack of the virus. Just that sort of glaucous gaze, while wishing I could be contributing meaningful language into the world of humans, duly rearranged toward some import, feeling the passage of a bright cold day filled with wealthy hours bulging with productive possibilities, eyes stung unable to tighten to focus or move without sand, arrow along anywhere, body bereft of batteries soughing along, draped, crumpled, wrenched, deflated here and there throughout the house, asking again and again like a cyclone of pencil marks – sentencing – within a gluey glaze of cranium bathed repletely in symptom-smattering chemicals scrambling and defracting synaptic sparks – “what do we think we’re doing when we want to – write/paint/draw/dialog – express/describe/inscribe/communicate?” “When we want to?” Why do the hours pain so when they disappear in illness or hurt, confusion or despair, inability?” “What have we proposed to ourselves or one another that we might be offering were we not undone?” Whirling conflation of such creamy viscous thoughts like mumbling mush, crossed inquiries, towers of babbling echoes just seeping stains, unable to vomit or defecate, trapped between intestinally sluicing back and forth as if clarity or some stint of reason could make sensible hope and power, as if, on a normal day with faculties and physiology aligned I might dialogically inscribe some arrangement/re-arrangement of terms and rhythms, sounds and sense that would change, remake, foster, enable or disable to some extent deemed important – but would I? Have I? When? How? In the ocean of stories, atomically-termed universe, paltry chicken feed of the barnyard of my pen on paper – what difference outside of me has any word meant lined up just so next to this on or that how it pieces my own world together like a context the two tiniest slits of my perspective, shaping and giving shape to all the data or input, experience or information swilled together like steel shavings to an electromagnet brushing a factory floor – what difference though – really – to spouse or children, you or universe, god or war? Absent depression or dismay because virus + medication is muffled even beyond apathy adding discomfort not soured in the brain but citrus mixed with dairy curdled without complaint what is it I think would have been made if sick days didn’t intervene, interfere, intrude, interrupt, would it have been better than this – this nothing but record of viral mania reformed by terminal translation : linguistics, semiotics, indices and signs available in repressed unhinged layerings of smoke across the pages?
All my Words are Silent 