#Flu outbreak

[surinderbhalla]

Understanding Flu: Symptoms and Prevention!

As the seasons change and the temperature drops, many of us find ourselves caught in the annual battle against the flu, also known as influenza. The flu is a contagious respiratory illness that can range from mild to severe and, in some cases, even lead to hospitalization or death. In this blog post, we’ll be understanding, what exactly the flu is, its symptoms, its causes, and, most importantly,…

[ausetkmt]

Pharmacist Lunsford Richardson made Vicks a household name throughout the nation, but his popular product did not do the same for him.

Even in his native North Carolina, where his most celebrated of chemical concoctions has been right under our stuffy noses and on our congested chests for generations, the mention of Richardson’s name elicits blank stares from all but those who study and cherish history.

Richardson’s salve, Vicks VapoRub, helped the world breathe easier during the devastating influenza pandemic of 1918 and during the countless colds and flus of our childhoods, yet most of us couldn’t pick Lunsford Richardson out of a one-man police lineup, much less a who’s who of medical pioneers.

Why didn’t Richardson — by all accounts a creative inventor and smart businessman — ever become as famous as those vapors packed into the familiar squat blue jar?

Because his name wouldn’t fit on the jar.

That’s one version of the story. According to company and family lore, Richardson initially dubbed his promising new product Richardson’s Croup and Pneumonia Cure Salve. Realizing that this name didn’t exactly roll off the tongue nor fit when printed on a small medicine jar, Richardson changed the name to honor his brother-in-law, Dr. Joshua Vick. Another account suggests the inventive druggist plucked the name from a seed catalog he’d been perusing that listed the Vick Seed Co.

The truth may never be known. What is known, though, is that Lunsford Richardson created a medicinal marvel for the ages, the likes of which may never be equaled.

Croupy beginnings

A Johnston County native born in 1854, Richardson loved chemistry and hoped to study it at Davidson College. The college’s chemistry program at the time wasn’t as strong as he’d hoped it would be, so he studied Latin instead, graduating with honors in three years. He returned to Johnston County and taught school, but it wasn’t long before the young man’s love of chemistry got the best of him. In 1880, he moved to Selma to work with his physician brother-in-law, Dr. Vick. It was not uncommon in those days for doctors to dispense drugs themselves, but Vick was so busy seeing patients that he teamed up with Richardson, allowing him to handle the pharmacy duties for him. Richardson relied on his knowledge of Latin to help him learn the chemical compounds required to become a pharmacist, and that’s when he began to experiment with recipes for the product that would become Vicks VapoRub.

It wasn’t until Richardson moved to his wife’s hometown of Greensboro in 1890 that his magical salve and other products he created began to take off.

“He was a man of great intellect and talent,” says Linda Evans, community historian for the Greensboro Historical Museum, which has an exhibit devoted to Richardson and Vicks.

“Druggists at the time fashioned their own remedies a lot, and he created a number of remedies, in addition to his magic salve, that he sold under the name of Vick’s Family Remedies. He was obviously a man of such creativity.”

In Greensboro, working out of a downtown drugstore he purchased (where he once employed a teenaged William Sydney Porter, the future short story writer O. Henry), Richardson patented some 21 medicines. The wide variety of pills, liquids, ointments, and assorted other medicinal concoctions included the likes of Vick’s Chill Tonic, Vick’s Turtle Oil Liniment, Vick’s Little Liver Pills and Little Laxative Pills, Vick’s Tar Heel Sarsaparilla, Vick’s Yellow Pine Tar Cough Syrup, and Vick’s Grippe Knockers (aimed at knocking out la grippe, an old-timey phrase for the flu).

These products sold with varying degrees of success, but the best seller in the lineup of Richardson’s remedies was Vick’s Magic Croup Salve, which he introduced in 1894. And by all accounts, necessity was the key to its success.

“He had what they referred to as a croupy baby — a baby with a lot of coughing and congestion,” explains Richardson’s great-grandson, Britt Preyer of Greensboro. “So as a pharmacist, he began experimenting with menthols from Japan and some other ingredients, and he came up with this salve that really worked. That’s how it all started.”

Another version of the story suggests that all three of the Richardson children caught bad colds at the same time, and Richardson, dissatisfied with the traditional treatment of the day, which included poultices and a vapor lamp, spent hours at his pharmacy developing his own treatment.

Richardson’s salve — a strong-smelling ointment combining menthol, camphor, oil of eucalyptus, and several other oils, blended in a base of petroleum jelly — was a chest-soothing, cough-suppressing, head-clearing sensation. When the salve was rubbed on the patient’s chest, his or her body heat vaporized the menthol, releasing a wave of soothing, medicated vapors that the patient breathed directly into the lungs.

Vicks in the mailbox

In 1911, Richardson’s son Smith, by now a successful salesman for his father’s company, recommended discontinuing all of the company’s products except for Vick’s Magic Croup Salve. He believed the salve could sell even better if the company stopped investing time and money in the other, less successful remedies. He also suggested renaming the salve Vicks VapoRub, according to the company’s history timeline, to “help dramatize the product’s performance.” Richardson agreed, and a century later, the name’s still the same.

Meanwhile, Richardson intensified his marketing efforts by providing free goods to druggists who placed large orders and publishing coupons for free samples in newspapers. He also advertised on billboards and sent promotional mailings to post office boxes, addressed to Boxholder rather than the individual’s name, thus earning him the distinction of being the father of junk mail.

In 1925, Vicks even published a children’s book to help promote the product. The book told the story of two elves, Blix and Blee, who rescued a frazzled mother whose sick child refused to take nasty-tasting medicines. Their solution, of course, was the salve known as Vicks VapoRub.

Expanding and experimenting

As successful as the marketing campaign was, nothing sold Vicks VapoRub like the deadly Spanish flu outbreak that ravaged the nation in 1918 and 1919, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. Loyal Vicks customers and new customers stocked up on the medicine to stave off or fight the disease.

According to the company’s history timeline, VapoRub sales skyrocketed from $900,000 to $2.9 million in a single year because of the pandemic. The Vicks plant in Greensboro operated around the clock, and salesmen were pulled off the road to help at the manufacturing facility in an effort to keep up with demand.

As the flu spread across the nation, Richardson grew ill with pneumonia in 1919 and died. Smith took over the company. Vicks continued to grow, buying other companies until Procter & Gamble bought it in the 1980s. Through the years, Vicks continued adding new products to its arsenal of cold remedies: cough drops, nose drops, inhalers, cough syrup, nasal spray, Formula 44, NyQuil. And whatever success those products attained, they got there standing on the broad shoulders of Richardson.

Richardson will never be a household name, but his salve has held that status for more than a century — and may do so for the next hundred years. And for Richardson, were he still around, that ought to be enough to clear his head.

A cure-all salve

Vicks users have claimed the salve can cure and heal many maladies. Even though Vicks doesn’t say the salve works for these problems, people still believe.

Toenail fungus: Rub the salve on your toenails, cover with socks, and sleep your fungus problems away. Cough: For a similar fix to a nagging cough, some believe rubbing Vicks on the soles of your feet can fix the problem. Dandruff: Rub Vicks directly on the scalp, and your flakes may just disappear. Chapped lips: Petroleum jelly is one of the ingredients in Vicks, and some say the ointment can help heal cracked lips. Mosquito bites: If you smooth Vicks on the red bumps on your legs and arms, it can supposedly take the itch right out. Warts: Dab Vicks on the wart, cover with duct tape, and it may fall off in a few days.

Greensboro Historical Museum 130 Summit Avenue Greensboro, N.C. 27401 (336) 373-2043 greensborohistory.org

See historical Vicks VapoRub bottles and learn about Lunsford Richardson.

[i-amusemyself]

so they've now found the New Improved monkeypox that WHO has declared a public health emergency outside of Africa- in Sweden and the US so far

heres me thinking we're facing down the next pandemic as This Current Covid Mess vs bird flu but now here comes fucking monkey pox with the steel chair

[mutopians]

everyone online that i see joking about pandemics (which. not a good thing to do at ALL and people really need to stop doing it) keeps responding to WHO declaring the monkeypox a global health emergency outbreak specifically. but there's ANOTHER pandemic on the horizon that i don't see enough people talking about.

since MARCH of this past year, multiple dairy cow herds in the US have been coming down with bird flu. when livestock owners tried dealing with the infections by killing the infected chickens that spread this whole mess, they caught the flu. there hasn't been many confirmed cases but the CDC isn't doing enough testing. they also have vaccines, but haven't started distributing them because the cases are currently just "mild" and haven't spread that much to humans.

unfortunately, the flu is now spreading to cats. these cats are NOT all on dairy farms, and some are indoor cats. the theory is that they're catching the flu from mice and birds. if that's true, bird/avian flu is jumping from birds to three different types of mammals: cows, mice, and cats. that makes it even more likely that it's going to jump to us.

there's ALSO concerns that we could get a super pathogen from avian flu mixing with the regular, seasonal flu in people. this hasn't happened yet, but we are getting closer and closer to flu season starting and vaccines still aren't being distributed for the bird flu.

i'm not an epidemiologist, but i do have a few pieces going off of what i've seen so far in news coverage on the avian flu:

if you have cats, please keep them indoors. avian flu is being tracked in domestic birds (chickens) but not in wild birds. it's very likely it's there already. also, try your best to keep them away from mice.

do NOT have raw eggs or milk or other cow/chicken products. pasteurization and cooking animal products has been shown to help prevent the virus from spreading.

if you've gotten rid of your masks from covid, make sure to restock, and be prepared to use them. n95s and kn95s have been shown to be the best at preventing the spread of respiratory illnesses, which is what this flu is.

speaking of the flu: get your flu shot. when the avian flu eventually spreads to humans, you do not want it mixing with the regular old flu.

(all of the bright blue text in this post are links with articles that have more information on the topics being mentioned.)

[notfye]

oh mamas does not feel good

[foxgirlplushie]

So, about the prompt, what do you think of "Blue poison takes Indigo out on a shopping trip", or maybe "Indigo accidentally gets poisoned, again, and Blue Poison takes care of her while she recovers"?

Or maybe just Blue Poison/Indigo

It isn't the poison that lays Indigo out this time. According to Dr. Sussurro, it's just a case of the flu that's working its way through the landship at the moment. But Blue insists on taking care of her, just as fervently as if it was her own fault Indigo was lying feverish in her bed, bringing her broth, and water, and anything she could possibly want. (Which at the moment was just a nap, and possibly another dose of pain meds)

[hybridmindthoughtsreloaded]

If you have chickens they will use a bird flu outbreak in your area to come onto your property and kill them.

[johnschneiderblog]

A chicken-and-egg situation

On the day after Christmas Sharon went shopping for eggs. Meijer was completely out of them, as was Target. She eventually found some at Kroger.

Pre-storm panic buying ...? A Christmas-cookie baking frenzy ...?  Holiday brunches ...? 

All of those things may have played a role, but there’s a bigger reason: avian flu. An outbreak of the deadly disease throughout the U.S. has devastated the egg-laying chicken population. Which also explains why eggs have become so expensive.

(Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

[chicago-geniza]

Two things can be true (my PCP deserves an end-of-year holiday vacation and also I need someone in that office to fill my prednisone and Symbicort scrips before the 31st so I'm not suspended in Shitty Lungs Disease hell & New Year Insurance Purgatory simultaneously) (autism be damned yr boy will make an urgent care Unpleasant if their oxygen drops below 90% for over 24 hours; I WILL make it everybody's problem & make sure the haggard, harried nurses know whose fault it is!!!)

In case it was not obvious: Insurance, it's insurance (they wouldn't let me fill my scrips early before The Holidays or have a telehealth visit & I couldn't come in person because, you know, there was a blizzard lol)

[intobarbarians]

i’m interested in how people in other countries feel about egg prices

[odvunir]

i highly recommend keeping up with the southwest airlines subreddit, both customers but more importantly southwest employees are able to give a lot of accounts and information there, like how the unions have been picketing and negotiating over the antiquated systems for years. this situation is absolutely buckwild and if southwest airlines survives to next christmas i will be completely shocked

https://www.reddit.com/r/SouthwestAirlines/comments/zx2jv0/just_your_friendly_neighborhood_ramp_rat/ this post in particular is good

[madelineusherspearls]

.

[launch-cronch]

My sister sent me a chicken conspiracy video that was just so funny. The gist of it is, newbie homesteader/prepper types got very freaked out because their chickens stopped laying eggs in fall and suddenly needed supplemental feed to continue laying.

Molting season is a conspiracy, I tell you.

[trendynewsnow]

Austria Declares Nationwide Bird Flu Risk Area Amid Outbreak

Austria Declares Nationwide Bird Flu Risk Area The Austrian Ministry of Health has officially classified the entire country as a risk area for bird flu (avian influenza), implementing new and stricter safety protocols effective from the early hours of Friday. This declaration follows a recent outbreak of bird flu in the Amstetten district of Lower Austria, where approximately 18,000 animals were…

[todayworldnews2k21]

Heres How Bird Flu Can Cause You Severe Health Problems

In this article, we’ll explore how bird flu affects human health, the potential complications it can lead to, and why it remains a public health concern. Heres How Bird Flu Can Cause You Severe Health Problems Bird flu, also known as avian influenza, is primarily a viral infection that affects birds but can occasionally infect humans and other animals. While bird flu is relatively rare in…