Thank you all for the kind response to yesterday's post. This probably isn't the best week to stay up writing, but I'm glad I did.
The highlight from today was a fantastic lecture on ebola from the director of our school's Center for Disaster Medicine. I won't bore you with the details, because this is already so saturated in the news right now. If you have any questions about anything ebola, write a comment or send me an email and I'd be happy to explain what I know, both about the disease and the response to it.
TIL: The cold is not the flu... unless it is. This is one of those big points that we try to ram home because it relates to low vaccination rates. People often confuse the cold and the flu, feeling that since a cold is no big deal, there's no need to get a flu shot. But the flu is WAY worse than a cold. The flu kills thousands to tens of thousands of people in the US every year. And these aren't just children, the elderly or people with weakened immune systems. The flu also kills perfectly healthy adults.
So all that being said, it's funny that one of the viruses that bears the influenza name, is actually better described as one of the (far less common) causes of the common cold. The influenza A and B viruses cause the full-blown, feel-like-you're-gonna-die flu. But the much rarer C-type of influenza virus causes symptoms so much weaker than its big, bad relatives, that it is considered one of the causes of the common cold. Most cases of the cold are caused by a rhinovirus or coronavirus, but several others can also cause those less-severe, non-specific symptoms, including RSV, adenovirus, coxsackievirus and others.
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