The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
What's the flu situation in your neck of woods? It seems to me that most people I've talked with have reported that they've had non-Covid flus that might not have been particularly dire but have been annoyingly sticky, lasting weeks at an end, with symptoms coming and going. We certainly had one of those, as a family. Something particular going on, or just people not remembering that this is what flus are like after the Covid-era "influenza pause"?
Doc here, the "official" answer here is that a few things are going on (at least in the U.S.).
-Healthcare resources are overwhelmed, especially pediatrics.
-People have forgotten what respiratory illness is like and have been taught to fear them because of COVID (Flu is really uncomfortable and always has been) leading more people to seek care.
-Lots of problems with people not seeking vaccines for the obvious reasons (get your fucking flu shots please).
-Immune systems are weak.
-Kids in particular are always prone to respiratory disease, but it's even worse than normal due to the obvious reasons, leading to transmission of adults at higher rates (including stuff like RSV which isn't usually an adult problem).
So it's a little bit of subjectively worse (after years of not being sick and being told to fear sickness...) but also a bit objectively worse due to more things being out there and lazy immune response. Hospital utilization has been high, and while mortality is still low it's higher than usual.
Also we have another COVID bump.
These things are supposed to also happen in "seasons" but this also has been fucked up severely over the last couple of years.
Edit: I should also add that we've had Acetaminophen shortages, which is like the most basic medication available (although it shouldn't be) and kinda tells you how bad things have been.
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