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HEALTH:

We have seen the enemy, and he is a nasty, spiky, easily transmitted virus that’s taking O.C. by storm - Type B influenza. by Susan Kelleher

If you want to get a peek at the influenza virus, you’re going to have to make friends with the scientists at Cal State Fullerton. The virus is so small, it can only be seen through a electron microscope. At 1,000 times the power of a regular scope, it can show you the little spikes surrounding the virus that make it such a formidable enemy.
And this year, there’s been no shortage of targets.
By the thousands, students and workers in Orange County have fallen ill to a bug that seems extra strong and lasts extra long, Half of Southern California’s influenza patients are battling Type B influenza, a rare, untreatable strain that accounts for just 1 percent of flu cases nationwide. Others are suffering from Type A, and still others from any number of virus - perhaps as many as 200 this season - that produce symptoms similar to the ful’s
So how do this many people get sick?
Influenza is an airborne virus, transmitted when people sneeze or cough. But the droplets that contain the virus when it’s expelled are usually large and don’t have much hang time, said Dr. Donald Forthal, assistant professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of California, Irvine.
“The have to get you before they fall to the floor,” Forthal said. “That takes pretty close contact.”
Ground zero for the flu virus can be your mouth, you nose or your eyes, all of which contain the epithelial cells the virus preffers. It usually finds its way there with your help.
Pick up an office phone that has been handled by a colleague in the early stages of flu. Hang up and rub your nose or eyes, bite your fingernails or touch your mouth, Viola. You’ve just given the virus a fighting chance to infect you.
Your body will put up a small defense: Nasal hair, mucus and cilia - the microscopic hairlike filaments on cells - will try to keep the virus from attaching itself to your cells.
But each virus is bristing with spikes that help it penetrate cells. Once inside, it hijacks the cell for its own purpose, turning in to a little virus factory for the it into a production of more flu virus.
Influenza incubates in your body for a day or two, all the while multiplying in the epithelial cells lining you repertory tract.
Your body quickly gets wise to the invader, and starts creating it hostile environment to kill it off. Unfortunately, you’re the environment, and you’re going to suffer for it.
The infection may move up to your sinuses and down into you trachea and bronchi.
The lining of you respiratory tract will become inflamed, causing you throat to hurt. You’ll get a fever, one of your body’s chief weapons to fight infection. You may even shiver, another effort by you body to generate more heat.
Your cells will release an substance called inter leaking, which in addition to fighting infection and activating others parts of the immune system causes head aches, muscle aches, fatigue and weakness,
Flu is dangerous because it kills or damages the cells along the respiratory tract that act as a barrier against bacteria. With the protection gone, the bacteria can move more easily down into the bronchi and the lungs, causing bronchitis and pneumonia.
While the worst may come on day 3, you’re going to be the most infectious during the 24 hours before you feel a thing, Forthal said.
“You stay infectious during the peak of infection, and then you start losing virus over time until, by the seventh day, you can’t find much virus at all.”
Which doesn’t mean your suffering is necessarily over. With two strains of influenza. Forthal said, you can get the flu twice in a year.

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