Our Writer at Large was floored by the mutated strain of the flu that is now shutting wards and surging across Scotland. He paints a vivid portrait of how to cope with the virus
I thought nothing could be worse than the swine flu of 2009. Aptly named, it felt as if a tubercular two-tonne hog was sat on my head, breathing its porky poison into me. What made it all the more disgusting was that I couldn’t stop thinking that some microscopic sliver of pig DNA was slithering around inside my cells, turning me into a porcine hybrid. Zoonosis gives me the ick. It’s just too sci-fi. My horror at the pandemic was driven more by the thought of what some dude in Wuhan had done to a perfectly innocent bat, than humanity’s possible extinction.
However, swine flu is now yesterday’s lurgy. This year’s flu makes it seem like baby-sniffles. I don’t know what species the 2025 monster jumped from, but it makes pigs look like weak sauce. Maybe it was Godzilla. Perhaps Satan got the flu and sneezed on Donald Trump during their weekly conference meeting before it passed to the rest of us. It is horrific. I had the flu vaccine and this monstrosity didn’t give a tuppenny fart. It rag-dolled me like an angry terrier with a rat for the best part of three weeks. Cases are surging in Scotland. Wards are closing in some hospitals. And we still haven’t reached the peak.
I’m just coming out the other side. So I’ve a few tips on how to protect and survive. I got my flu jab just before Halloween. After my 2009 swine flu horror, I pay to get jagged every year. Until this year, it worked just dandy. There were signs of trouble during the jag, though. My pharmacist has very cool hair, so we sometimes talk about quiffs, waxes and the curse of us both having lustrous locks in our fifties. After he jagged me, I had to wait around for the usual 10 minutes to ensure I didn’t cark it, so I picked up our hair-do chat where we’d last left off.
He, however, was more interested in telling me that there was a new flu variant about and the vaccine wasn’t designed for it. The vaccine, he explained, was cooked up in the lab before this new variant got going.
Here’s the science bit: mutations have occurred in this year’s H3N2 flu strain, which help the virus evade immunity. That’s why 2025 is expected to be the worst flu season in many years.
Read more by Neil Mackay
- Farage in Falkirk: it should make our stomachs heave to have this man in Scotland
- I’ve quit Twitter and the world is a beautiful and happy place once more
- Europe trades on culture, yet Glasgow is slashing the arts … why?
Scientists, like Professor Christophe Fraser, from the Pandemic Sciences Institute at Oxford University, say that with the vaccine “some protection is better than no protection, but this year is likely to one of the years where the amount of protection is less than in years when the match is better”.
I think – though I can’t be sure – that the vaccine did limit the damage this monster inflicted on me. I guess it was a little like wearing an American football helmet before being beaten over the head with a cricket bat for an hour. You won’t emerge at the top of your game, but you will probably live.
Certainly, a relative of mine got the same flu and ended up in hospital with pneumonia, and they’re the same age as me. Crucially, they weren’t vaccinated. So here’s my first piece of advice: get the damn vaccine. It’ll hopefully keep you out of hospital.
The fact that I was vaccinated but hit so hard made me initially think that I had Covid. Given the vaccine had worked every year since 2009, I was convinced I didn’t have the flu, until the Covid test came up clear.
This flu hits fast. I was feeling a bit sniffly for a few days, like I had a mild cold coming on. Then it pounced mid-afternoon on Thursday November 19. I give the date as I was only properly back on my feet on Monday December 8. It’s a long war, this one.
Come that Thursday evening, I was a shivering, burbling, sweaty mess. My wife had time to go out and buy medicines, food and plenty of juice before she was hit the next day. If she hadn’t, we’d have starved as both of our adult children were out of town. More advice: if you feel this starting, get supplies in; act like you’re a survivor in The Walking Dead. You’ll be puking more than eating, though.
This flu doesn’t mess around. It went straight to full-blown fever, with hallucinations. Your body will do that hot-and-cold-at-the-same-time thing for days. Bedsheets on skin will feel like you’re being flayed.
In the very depths of this illness, I was unable to even go downstairs to get some water as the fever made the floor seem to move. I thought if I tried to walk downstairs I’d go ass over teapot to my death. My wife was in the same state.
I was so dehydrated I actually had to call a pal who’s a cop to come around and bring us water. She entered masked and gloved. I can barely remember her leaving. Apparently, I said: “Thank you, but run now, this is the death house.”
I make no apology for being an abject Drama Queen.
There’s no humiliation this flu won’t inflict; it has invented punishments other flus only imagine. You won’t sleep for days. It makes your emotions red raw.
I could only watch happy TV shows, but even they were too much sometimes. The Gavin and Stacey wedding episode made me cry for an hour. Look, I’m pretty soppy, but Christmas adverts were tipping me over the edge at this point.
It was impossible to read as fever made my eyes swim and I got nauseous. I lost my voice for five days – after coughing up blood. It was like being held captive by Vlad the Impaler and each day he’d reveal some new instrument of torture. Even now, when I’m basically over it, I feel like I’ve done ten rounds with Mohammad Ali, like he hung me up on a hook and tenderised me for Sunday lunch.
If you’ve had this, then you’re my sibling in suffering. If you haven’t, then I genuinely pray for you. The only person I wish this on is Vladimir Putin.
Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, extremism, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics
Share