People Getting Sick with Mystery Illnesses, Testing Negative for Covid, RSV, Flu. Here's Why.

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- People are getting sick with mystery illnesses & testing negative for COVID, RSV, & flu. Here's why. Insider/Yahoo, Dec. 7, 2022. -Ed.

If you have a fever, it may be a sign that you have the flu or COVID — or it could signal something else entirely.

A lot of people are sick in the US right now with fevers, coughs, and sore throats.

Flu and cold season has arrived early — and it's caught people by surprise.

If you have a fever, getting tested for the flu and COVID may help you access antiviral treatments.

It's the most wonderful time of the year ... to be a respiratory disease.

"The cold weather, the gathering indoors, all of that is good for respiratory viruses, and bad for symptoms," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said during a media briefing on Monday, stressing that multiple respiratory illnesses are here early this holiday season, challenging overstretched hospitals across the country. Flu cases and hospitalizations have soared since Thanksgiving, but some people are complaining that they're testing negative for the flu, RSV, COVID, while still extremely sick.

Writer Cora Harrington said on Twitter that she got some "weird as hell virus" that made her "basically unconscious for a couple days," calling it "one of the strangest illnesses I've ever had." General practitioner Stephanie de Giorgio from the UK said, similarly, that some kind of "not-flu, not-covid, not-RSV thing" was going around her workplace, & "felt bloody awful," prompting a fever & sore throat. Doctors from at least 3 continents say that many different viruses — not just flu & COVID — are having a real "party" this year. People also shouldn't discount the idea that a COVID, RSV, or flu test taken early on may not necessarily go positive. Here's what to consider if you're feeling feverish right now.

- Winter illness season is off to an early start: To give you a sense of how many sick people there are in the US, here is what the * CDC's weekly "influenza-like illness" MAP — which tracks how many people are showing up at doctor's offices with fevers & coughs or sore throats — looked like on Thanksgiving week in 2021: This red-hot level of "influenza-like illness" is a barometer that's based on patient symptoms (not viral tests) so it likely encompasses many cases of flu, COVID, & several other respiratory diseases showing up on doctors' doorsteps.

Trying to tell whether you've got the flu or COVID based on your symptoms? Good luck. "Fever, muscle aches, cough, headache, those are going to be common," Dr. Roy Gulick, chief of infectious disease at NY-Presbyterian & Weill Cornell Medicine, told Insider. "You really can't tell the difference between flu & COVID." This year's spike in respiratory illnesses has also arrived earlier than usual, & Gulick says it's "caught people by surprise" who haven't gotten their flu shot or COVID booster. But it's not too late to roll up your sleeves, if you haven't yet. "There is still time to get vaccinated," Walensky said. Flu season typically peaks in the US some time between Dec. & Feb., but the illness can circulate well into May, or even later on in the spring & summer, as it did last season..

Last week, nearly one in 10 deaths nationwide was due to influenza, COVID, or pneumonia. Tragically, experts say, many of those deaths were preventable...

- Read More + Maps, https://news.yahoo.com/people-getting-sick-mystery-illnesses-145200173.html