So don’t go to the doctor and ask for antibiotics, for they won’t help. If you’re in a country that let you buy antibiotics over the counter, save them for something it might be helpful for.

There are antiviral drugs, but their side effects tend to be higher than those in antibiotics and are usual reserved for very bad infections; if someone is sick enough to be in the hospital, antivirals like Tamiflu will be prescribed, but otherwise healthy adults won’t generally be prescribed antivirals. However, children under the age of two, the elderly and folks with immune disorders are on the CDC’s list of folks that are candidates for antivirals, since they are at higher risk of dying from bad bouts of the flu.

For the rest of us, the old joke about viral infections rings true; if you go to the doctor, you get better in 6-8 days, if you don’t, you get better in about a week. All the doctor can do absent antivirals is to treat symptoms. If you have bad chest congestion that is causing breathing problems, steroid shots or nebulizing inhalers can help. A visit to a doctor isn’t in vain, especially if you have serious enough problems that might require hospitalization, but don’t expect miracle drugs from Dr. Feelgood.

The old-school advice still holds; drink plenty of clear liquids, rest and STAY HOME; you don’t want other people to be feeling as miserable as you do. If you are having a lot of congestion, the mucus will be sucking up liquids, so you have to drink a lot of water to keep from becoming Pierre, the Dehydrated Frenchman. The mucus is helping clear those unwelcome visitors out, so keep the water coming.

Decongestants can help clear out your sinuses and lungs, but avoid antihistamines; they dry up your sinuses, but they also will tend to keep the virus in place. You want your immune system to get those viruses out of there, and mucus is how your system gives them the heave-ho.

Vaccines are a common method of heading off deadly diseases. The trick in developing a vaccine is finding a weaker form of the disease that can trigger an immune response, so that when the real disease shows up, the immune system is locked and loaded for it. The word vaccine flows from the Latin vacca for cow.

The original vaccine was for smallpox; when a British scientist found that milk maid weren’t getting smallpox, he found that cowpox, a much milder illness, gave them immunity to smallpox. They then proceeded to deliver the cowpox virus to folks, fending off the now-extinct (other than lab samples) smallpox virus.

One modern method finds an attenuated (weakened) version of a virus, one that will trigger an immune response to the virus but won’t wreck havoc on the body of the person getting vaccinated. That takes time, for the virus first has to be identified and then a crippled version of the virus will need to be created.

A second route is to kill the viruses and then inject them. Such killed viruses are safer for a lot of high-risk groups, like children under 2, the elderly and folks with immune-deficiencies.

The nasal-spray version of the vaccine is a live virus version, so at-risk folks or people who live with them should avoid it and get the killed-virus shot version.

Vaccines can cause reactions in people, so people are often leery of them. However, most vaccines are well-tested before given to a broad population and the side-effects will be far less than the effects of the virus, else it won’t be given. That hasn’t kept health care workers in New York from protesting having to get the vaccine.

However, it won’t help if you already have the flu ; one student of mine noted that she had scheduled a flu shot for a week from now and then proceeded to catch the flu.

Fever- You normally don’t get a fever with a cold, while a 100-degree-plus temperature is common with a flu bug. So, if you get out your trusty thermometer and it doesn’t crack triple-digits, you probably have a cold.

Aches and Pains- The flu is marked by headaches and other bad aches around the body; colds tend not to have as many aches.

Chills-Chills are more of a symptom of the flu.

Phlegm Fatale- A cold will produce a lot of mucus, producing chest congestion and stuffed-up sinuses; cold will produce coughs that will bring up plenty of mucus, while flu coughs are usually drier.

Speed- The flu tends to hit very quickly, within 3-6 hours, while cold symptoms are slower to manifest themselves. You may “think you have a cold” but you’ll know it when you get the flu.

Also, don’t confuse H1N1 with rotaviruses that are commonly called stomach flu or intestinal flu; rotaviruses cause vomiting and diarrhea rather than a dry cough and plenty of aches; if you’re “praying to the porcelain gods Rolf and Earl”, you probably have a rotavirus rather than the flu.

If you do have the flu, there isn’t much the doctor can do. Antibiotics don’t work on either colds or flues, since they are viruses rather than bacteria. You need antivirals to go after the flu, but those have higher side-effects than antibiotics and are generally reserved for very bad cases or people with poor immune systems.

There are a number of things that you can do, many of which are old-school disease treating tools. Drink plenty of liquids, which will give your system the tools needed to flush things out. Get plenty of rest, since your immune system is working overtime and needs to have all hands on deck to get rid of this nasty invader.

Lastly, stay home. Going to work or school runs the risk of giving your coworkers and classmates the same joy you’re going through, so tell your inner tough guy to get lost and stay put.

H1N1 tends to affect younger people more than older people, since many folks over 55 have been exposed to a cousin of the current H1N1 virus back in 1957. Also, this flu isn’t as lethal as many viruses of the recent past, like the bird flu that hit Asia or SARS that hit Canada and China earlier in the decade. That being said, people have died from this bug, including 4 people in Kentucky.

You don’t get swine flu from eating pork products. Pigs and humans have similar cardiovascular systems and thus are prone to the same diseases, but proper cooking will kill off the virus; lunch meats are already cooked, so any bugs they have aren’t generally from the animals providing the meat.

That’s one of the reasons the media has made an effort not to use “swine flu” to describe the virus; while it is suspected that the virus was first transmitted via pigs, it was more likely from live pigs to a farmer, not from eating a ham sandwich or a BLT.

Most of the prevention methods are good for avoiding any bug; wash your hands before eating, keep those hands away from your mouth and nose if they haven’t been washed and keep away from folks if you’re sick. Hand sanitizers like Purell have done a land-office business this year; when H1N1 hit the University of Florida’s football team had, a Kentucky sportswriter christened their head coach Urban “Purell” Meyer.

Face masks can catch coughs and help keep you from infecting others, but they are less effective in keeping yourself from getting infected. A better prevention method that is underused is staying home when you’re sick. We often have the ethic of “playing hurt” and trying to tough-out your illness, but you don’t want other folks to go through H1N1, so stow your inner John Wayne and stay home if you’re sick.

Schools will often close down if the flu hits ; even during a normal flu season, if a school hits a critical mass of absenteeism (10% is often enough), they will close the school for a week. That will be long enough to let everyone who has the flu get over it so it doesn’t spread any further.

For schools, sports can be an issue; sick players are going to be in close proximity to healthy teammates and foes alike. When the flu hit the University of Florida’s football team, ill players, including star quarterback Tim Tebow, flew to their game at Kentucky in separate planes from their healthy teammates.

Getting individuals to stay home when they are sick is an important way to stop the flu from running through a workplace or school. People often are given kudos for toughing it out and coming to work walking-wounded, but not only will they be working at a reduced capacity, they run the risk of getting everyone else infected, possibly forcing the entire business to shut down.

For instance, the flu has hit the crew of the TV show Bones hard enough that producer Hart Hanson tweeted about having to stop production due to the large number of staff out with the flu. Had some of those sick workers stayed home rather than shared their blessings with their co-workers, the show might have gone on.

To this point, we have not seen the radical steps that Mexico did of closing all restaurants and bars during the height of their H1N1 scare. With some 20-20 hindsight, we know that such measures were likely overkill. H1N1 is not as lethal as some viruses of the recent past like the bird flu or SARS ; it seems to be more contagious than other flu but not any more lethal. However, the Mexicans didn’t know that when things first took off and they erred on the side of caution.

Thus, officials have to work on being cautious without being labeled The Boy Who Cried Swine Flu ; finding a workable middle ground is a work in process.