title: Fighting off 'flu.
abstract: All manner of coughs, colds and sneezes are passed off as 'the 'flu' but anyone who has experienced the dreadful spirit-sapping incapacity of the true virus will know that those who proclaim to have it while remaining upright misunderstands its true nature. The aching limbs, the lethargy, the headaches - it's like being crushed by a barn door, while having a nose running like a tap and a cough to wake the dead. If you're young and fitish, you emerge from the experience a few days later weakened and washed out, but essentially alive. If you're an older person, however, or one whose immunity is already compromised, the consequences can be fatal. And the threat is particularly acute in epidemic years: 29,000 died from 'flu in 1989/90, although even in an 'average' year, 12,000 deaths are linked to 'flu activity.