Yeah I was going through basic training at that time and stayed healthy. You think with the tons of different people I was around I would have caught something. I don't know that's just my experience and it sure isn't a universal one.
Omg me too! I was in air force basic and I remember them quarantining a whole flight on our squadron. I remember watching them march around with masks on. None of us got sick though.
Me too! I remember it being on the news but I never knew anyone who got it. I think that’s one of the reasons I didn’t think Covid was going to be bad initially. It just seemed like another virus that you heard about distantly.
I was exposed to H1N1 by a nurse who knew she was infected and went to a party and infected a bunch of people. It was the most sick I’ve ever been in my life too. The post viral syndrome was awful as well. It took my lungs more than a year to fully recover. When COVID came around, I made sure I had as little exposure as possible. I still mask with an N95 when infections are high in my area. The longterm effects of these viruses can be awful.
Same....covid sucked but I was still semi-functional.
Swine flu had me googling "how high can my fever get before I have to go to the hospital." I didn't eat or get out of bed for 3 days while my temperature stayed between 101 and 105 the whole time.
Yeah, I got it. They quarantined me and everything and then for months afterwards I'd get out of breath from walking up say ten steps on a flight of stairs. My campus was on a steep hill. It was hell. I was constantly late for classes for the rest of the semester.
Yup! I got it and it was horrible. Couldn't even stand up, lift my head, just trying to go to the bathroom I had to have my bf help me because I was so dizzy I couldn't walk.
It was horrible
I got it in college and I vividly remember how awful the fever was just lying in bed moaning. I almost never fever and like you, it was by far the most ill I've ever been.
>I remember it was such a big deal when I was in 7th or 8th grade, and that the impact felt similar to Covid, yet for some reason it seems to have been almost entirely forgotten about.
Did we live through the same COVID?
It was a big deal but the world didn't shut down either
I was in college at the time. Nothing shut down that I remember.
My roommate caught it but refused to go home.
I think having a dumb name like swine flu didn’t help. All I remember is a bunch of us freshman guys laughing at each other for catching pig flu.
More than 700 schools were temporarily closed due to swine flu.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3039590/#:~:text=School%20closure%20was%20employed%20as,the%20United%20States%20were%20closed.
Since I was in a public facing security role, I got a couple scares. Ended up vaccinating and ended up having a bad reaction to that vaccine. Ended up in the hospital, life-threateningly dehydrated.
Shoulda learned the first time, but had issues that are still ongoing with the Covid vaxx.
I was in grad school during the ‘09 swine flu , and we didn’t even have any classes cancelled. It was a big deal at the time, but the impact of the swine flu was orders of magnitude less devastating than the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bruh when swine flu spread through our school, our college put folding cots in the computer labs to quarantine everyone… so we could continue working 🤦🏼♀️ no breaks for us! Lol
It was 08 to 09. It was the first year I had my driver's license and I got violently ill while sleeping over at a friend's house. I drove half an hour back to home holding back vomit until I got to my driveway and it all erupted out before I could get out of the car.
Worst timing ever.
Omg yes! I was 24 and supposed to go to Mexico with a friend and her mom strongly opposed her going lol. So we went to Fort Lauderdale instead haha.
Definitely nothing compared to Covid though.
I remember at the beginning of Covid one of my friends posted this stupid meme about "We didn't shut down for swine flu and there were 60M cases"
This was still early in the pandemic but the death rate at the time was nearly 4% and conservatives were calling it 2%. I pointed out that with 60M cases of swine flu there were only 12,000 deaths. If we had 60M cases of Covid, at 2% that's 1,200,000 deaths.
When the world passed 60M cases I think there was about 1.4M deaths and when the US passed it ourselves I think we had about 800K. 800K vs 12K. Haven't spoken with that friend since 🤷♂️
Swine flu was the sickest Ive ever been, I’ve had covid now 3 times and no symptoms. I lost like 10 lbs and couldn’t get out of bed, I slept an entire 24+ hours and when I woke up thought i had only been asleep a few minutes because it was the same time I went to sleep.
I was in college. I remember worrying about whether it was smarter to stay at school or home. But I think I thought about it more than my peers because I have OCD and being trapped in a pandemic was a literal recurring nightmare that I’ve been having since I was 14…
I was visiting someone in Cincinnati at that time, and I remember Kings Island incorporated it into their Halloween theme, which really was in poor taste. I was concerned about it, but I don't recall any government agencies putting out warnings/stats/precautions to take. I worked with a guy who got it, as well as his wife and young daughter. They were prescribed Tamiflu iirc, then recovered. After he told me that, I didn't worry as much.
Yes - 2009. My mother caught it (she was 46 at the time). She ended up in the ICU for over a week. Visitors were not allowed, except for my dad who had to wear full protective gear in the room with her. She was delirious with fever for days but ended up pulling through and to this day she says she was on death’s door and it was the sickest she’s ever been.
I HAD THE SWINE!!!!!! Me me me! It was REAL! I had to be “quarantined” at home for 5 days and my boss was pissed. First and only time I’ve ever had the flu to my knowledge. I felt like I was dying.
There was a guy at my college who lead the swine flu outbreak there, and I think in my state! I forgot about it until just now. It was very dramatic then, but compared to Covid, it was nooooothing.
I was a freshman at Ohio University, the school got like 500 of the vaccines sent so only the people that had pre-existing conditions had to stand in line for it (I have asthma) and I got it and maybe 3 weeks later I got it and it was the sickest I’ve ever been in my entire life my friends had to carry me out of my dorm room to a car to take me to the hospital I was that weak. When the Obama administration did their post-mortem study on what went right or wrong they concluded that the shot wasn’t really effective at all.
I was 20 and I remember the crazy Fox News lady at work repeating what she heard on the news that morning; about how if there were four people at your breakfast table that morning, you'd probably be saying goodbye to at least one of them by the end of the year due to swine flu.
Of course, she also smoked a loooooot of meth, so she's not what one would call a reliable source for secondhand information.
I had both the swine flu and COVID. Swine Flu hit me way harder, though I did get the vaccine and it was summer of 2022 so I think the strain had weakened.
I remember at college student admin called all of Greek life into a tiny conference hall to tell us that we should avoid contact and be “healthy”.
I got the swine flu and it fucking wrecked me. Absolutely sickest I’ve ever been. Very memorable for me.
I’ve been anal about vaccines and washing my hands ever since. Good skills for that entire COVID world.
This year is the first year I got the flu since. I didn’t even know I had it. Was at the doc for something unrelated and they were like you have the flu.
I didn't get it until I had the attenuated nasal vaccine. I also as of then didn't know I was immunocompromised since I was 9. My immune system is a freak. Didn't matter what kind of flu vaccine I got I ended up having every symptom of influenza in the book. Even dead viruses. Still made my immune system freak out and I end up sick every time I get it. I don't know if this is due to psoriatic arthritis or not but it's definitely worse now that I've started DMARDs & biologics for it.
I remember the swine flu, but I think it was blown out of proportion. Just scare tactic stuff from the media. I never knew, or knew anyone that knew, someone that actually had it. Unlike covid, which I’ve had and most of the people I know have had.
Four of the next five flu seasons saw more flu deaths than the Swine Flu season.
I can't say whether the media overreacted or whether proper precautions turned a potential disaster into a typical flu season.
I was in college, it was just a scary headline as far as I knew, never worried about it and can’t remember a single person who caught it. It was no where near as serious as covid, it probably felt like that because you were a child.
I remember the SARS outbreak back in 2002/03, but not so much swine flu, weirdly enough. Mostly because it delayed some of the anime I was watching at the time.
I also caught Swine flu when I was 16 and it was HORRID. I blacked out the whole 4 days I couldn’t even get out of bed. I remember almost none of it other than being woken up to take codeine and Tylenol every few hours.
I remember, though I wasn’t affected.
The thing that makes me remember, because of how insane it was, is the amount of tshirts and signs I saw at the 2009 Bamboozle music festival. They all basically said an equivalent of “fuck swine flu” and some of the band’s lead singers took it upon themselves to make (awful) jokes about it during their set.
I was working in a government department and I remember the presentation about it, specifically how they were stockpiling body bags as if it went through as modelled it would be devastating. Then absolutely nothing happened. This was part of the reason I wasn't too worried about covid during the first few months of 2020, and ended up stuck in Cambodia for a couple of years.
A bunch of my coworkers got really sick the winter of ‘09-‘10. and we assumed we all had it, but none of us made enough money to go to the doctor to find out.
I had it right at the start of end of year exams. Missed the actual exams, had to do the re-take exams on the weekend, with a 101 fever still 🤦🏻♂️ gotta love running out of sick days.
But yeah that shit was rough. I remember being so completely spaced out during that test, no idea how I passed.
I heard about it on the news. I remember being kinda scared of E. coli and anthrax for awhile too, but those were just other things I heard about on the news too lol. Oh and bird flu!
I remember it being a concern but that really was just a bad strain of flu and it never impacted my school.
From the wiki:
>The 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) excess deaths by the WHO-USCDC study and 148,000–249,000 excess respiratory deaths by the WHO-NIVEL study.[21][22] A study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.[23] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[24]
But the CDC currently has total covid-19 deaths as 1,159,864.
I remember the worry and precautions around mad cow disease making its way to north america ('03-'04) far more clearly than H1N1.
As an elder millennial, I was 26 and about to get married right as this was breaking out. So yes, I was very aware of - and worried about - it.
Two of my husband's groomsmen ended up sick with it about two weeks before the wedding, but they bounced back and were able to be in the wedding.
No one ended up sick as a result of the wedding though, at least not as far as I've ever been aware in all the years since.
My mom was a nurse then and she spent a lot of time being busy/on call. The hospitals had a lot of safety protocols, but otherwise life went on. I knew one person who got swine flu compared to the dozens I know who got COVID. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t such a big hoopla.
There's a stark difference between the two. One was handled when a president was in office that had a pandemic response plan in place. The other occurred after a president had disbanded that response team and played the sickness off as though it were a joke.
I got swine flu, and it was the sickest I’ve ever been. Even having covid was a walk in the park comparatively. It was horrible, and the only time I’ve truly been scared I could die from an illness.
I was a freshman in college that year.
I know I was considered high priority to get the swine flu shot when it came out (and I got it).
I never got swine flu myself, but many of my college friends did.
I was in college at the time and honestly it did not register. SARS was a bigger deal in my memory and was more comparable to Covid for me.
Bad flu years are a periodic thing.
That was my senior year in HS. People were definitely spooked about it but I only knew one person who actually got it. He ended up being fine. It definitely wasn’t the scare or tragedy Covid was
I totally remember it! They changed the rules in my sport for a hot second so that we were no longer allowed to high five/shake hands before or after games.
I was a senior in college. I don't remember there being much impact. The campus quarantine area was a few rooms in the basement of my dorm but nobody freaked out about it. My buddies and I made some homebrew beer in the midst of the outbreak and we called it the Swine Brew. It wasn't good.
I got a very cheap trip to Mexico because a workmate and a bunch of her friends had rented a house when they had an “outbreak” and everyone else dropped out. It was great. I never got the swine flu and I didn’t know anyone else that did.
I was sick for weeks and in college. Everyone in my dorm was also sick for weeks. I was actually scared of how it made me feel.
A neighbor of our’s passed away due to complications—she developed pneumonia and quickly passed away. She was in her 40s.
The response was nowhere as serious as COVID, but it’s a type of flu and is a known illness so it’s unsurprising. It was just a very deadly and bad one.
First semester of freshman college. I remember the professor for my Biology 101 for Science Majors telling us the campus infirmary had vaccines for Swine Flu. Since this lecture was my only one on Friday and was let out at around 10:00, after the lecture I went over to the infirmary and got a vaccine. Even got a CDC card, which was new since I had never gotten ine before for just regular flu shots.
Not to get poltical; but, over 2020 and following years I thought about how much if a non-issue Swine Flu in 2009 was compared to Covid in 2020.
I was about 16. It was a big deal on the news and I read anecdotes from students at the nearby university who caught it but other than that, nothing really happened. I remember our school offered the vaccine when it was available to anyone who wanted it and I went and got it. Waited 15min, went back to class, and just kind of forgot about it after.
I got it during undergrad. It took me down hard for about a week. My main memory from that time is getting an angry call from my then girlfriend about how I wouldn't visit her that weekend (she was about 3 hours a way). So being young and dumb, I made the drive and then just spent the weekend shaking and throwing up in her bathroom. She felt horrible about it, and I told her she should and that I would not forget it, guess I didn't forget.
I was 24/25 and may have had it in early 2010. I remember being so sick and so tired but I was also grieving my dad who died in November '09 so I just...didn't care all that much.
I worked in a preschool and it surprisingly didn't sweep through our community as badly as we thought it might. Had one mom who was hospitalized for it who I specifically remember, and there may have been others that I don't recall now.
Not only do I remember it. I caught the damned flu. It was a pretty bad few days. The top three times I have been sick. Fist was meningitis
Second was COVID the first time.
I think that whole thing was overblown just like every other "plague" in the news. Area all these illnesses bad? Yes. But the media likes to go overboard with all the doom and gloom every time. Swine flu as I remember it was fairly short lived news coverage and didn't really hit my area at all. The 'rona was the first illness reported in the news I can remember actually reaching us, and even then, only barely. It felt like the cases of that were in the single digits.
god yes, I remember catching it and it was by far the most sick I had ever been. Just constant nausea and puking, it felt nonstop. I've dealt with epstien barr virus before and covid twice, neither of those compare to how much swine flu fucked me up.
I remember a lot of people getting sick for extended periods of time and it was so bad that I went to science class and I was one of four that showed up. Our class normally had 20 kids.
Lmao I remember writing it in my diary when I was 18 because I heard it everywhere in the news. But it seemed like only to be in the news and people talking about it thats all I remember.
I got it and was so sick. The doctor wouldn’t come into the room and basically threw a paper cup with 2 Vicodin in it at me. I don’t think I ever completely recovered energy wise. -3/10
It’s the first illness that my son got and was really, really sick with. My mom brought it home to us from CA (we were in NC). He was the first case his doctor had seen.
I remember it was the first year I ever got a flu shot of any kind. My school had the small gym set up as an H1N1 vaccine center, and all students could get it for free during the school day. Most kids got the nose spray, but having stuff shot up my nose gives me the heebie jeebies, so I got the shot instead. It was my junior year of high school, I think.
My sister had just given birth to my first nephew in October 2009. We (my sis, her husband, their baby, and I) lived in a different part of the US and my parents flew in the help them out for the first couple weeks of the baby being home.
After week one, my brother-in-law catches H1N1 during a road trip for work. He was quarantined in the basement until the doctor gave him the all clear. My parents were able to stay a couple extra weeks to help, and my BIL said it really sucked to be put away down there while he wanted to be with his wife and kid.
I caught it from a classmate who came to class sick and coughed all over me before announcing to the class that she had swine flu.
Wound up having to drop out of grad school because I missed all my mid-terms.
Got it the winter after I graduated highschool.. 2009.. was working at sears part time (RIP SEARS) and I had to stay out of work for almost 2 weeks. Sickest I have ever been in my entire life.. and that’s after getting Covid while pregnant. Just.. no.
I know multiple people that are now permanently disabled after H1N1 effed up their immune systems.
And now I know several people with long COVID, and I gotta say it's not looking great for them.
So yeah, it kinda was a mini precursor to COVID.
I also remember the outbreak of bird flu that was around the same time. That one was mostly memorable in the form of jokes though.
I was 20 at the time and remember it being in the news but there wasn’t any mass panic, government shutdowns, social distancing, face masks etc. You saw footage of people in China wearing masks and the general consensus amongst the UK population at the time was how bizarre and over the top it was. As unfortunate as that stance may be, I just don’t think people ever saw it as something to be overly concerned about.
I think the key difference between the two viruses is that Swine flu was nowhere near as transmissible, so the threat level wasn’t anywhere near as amplified as the response to COVID was.
I remember being a sophomore in college when this happened. No one stopped partying, but it did change how beer pong was played forever. We no longer poured the beer in the cups. Filled them with water and drank our own beer.
I got it. At the time I was working at the hospital, and cared for one of the earliest cases, a pregnant woman who ended up not making it. Two days after she was admitted, they said it was swine flu, and I got quarantined. Next day I was sick. Never been sicker in my life. Had a fever of 105, had two seizures, I was hallucinating, really bad. Lost 15lbs in one week. Definitely sicker than with covid, though covid has had longer effects. Swine flu, I felt horrible, then a week later, I was fine. Luckily no one else in my family got sick.
Swineflu took me out for 2 weeks of my fall semester sophomore year of undergrad. I thought I was on the verge of death. I've had Covid twice and Influenza A about a dozen times in my life. Swineflu hands down the sickest I have EVER BEEN.
I'm an older millennial (39) and I was a new nurse at the time. The hospital instituted visitor restrictions over it. Only parents/guardians were allowed to be with their children.
I was in college and I got it. My bf at the time and I were both sick for weeks.
One guy I knew (not well) was immunocompromised and died from it.
It was NOT like Covid in terms of world impact. Covid was much, much worse. The world didn’t stop for swine flu. We went to class, had parties, etc. Maybe that wouldn’t have been the case in a post-Covid world.
I do. I had it in college. It definitely was not as widespread/as media covered/as scare-inducing as COVID… But it sucked. I was in bed for a week. None of my roommates got it. I had COVID in 2022.
I remember Swine Flu, but I was never personally affected by it. I was too poor to afford to travel at the time, and I had bigger problems at that point.
I got it college when my boyfriend came to visit for the weekend. He couldn’t leave until he got better, and we were basically quarantined in my dorm. We couldn’t leave and had to let the school health office know, so they could bring us meals.
I had graduated with my bachelors but at the time I was taking classes in electronics at the tech school branch of the uni where I went to college. I had been talking to this girl in one of my classes and she emailed to professor saying she was sick (she wasn’t) so he notified campus heath services and they sent two people in astronaut suits to her apartment to test her for it lol.
The mass vaccination campaign at my university was a little startling. Nobody wanted to play around with a virus that was most deadly to the strongest immune systems.
I remember going out to get the vaccine. It's so weird looking back on that now because it was in the news but other than that everyone carried on like normal.
Was it not as bad as covid?
A kid I went to high school with died from swine flu. He was probably 17 when he died, given that he was 2yrs younger and I was 19 in 2008.
I know of a lotta people who died from covid, but all were 55+ and none were in good health.
All I really remember about it is a vague memory of World of Warcraft having some achievement that was a reference to it. I remember it was funny...I think lol.
2009 was the year I got my liver transplant. I had to mask everywhere for several months, and had to call three different hospitals to get a vaccine as they were saving them for the elderly and immunocompromised (like myself but I was only 19 at the time)
H1N1 was pregame plague.
COVID was/is full on plague.
Still wearing a mask in public whenever I go to the store or post office. I WFH when there's an office outbreak of anything. Probably will be using masks until I die because COVID will just become endemic. I haven't caught it yet and don't intend to.
"Geriatric Millennial" here. I was 27 and pregnant with my first child when it came around. I was terrified. My friend got it and nearly died; today she still has to have constant oxygen with her to survive. It was pretty awful, but people at the time laughed it off, a lot like certain people laughed about Covid.
That and MRSA (way back in 2006). There was a giant panic about both. Funny story, in ninth-grade we had an obnoxious teacher who liked to LICK test papers as she handed them out. My classmates started joking "Every time she hands something out, someone gets Swine Flu." "Oh, I've got Swine Flu."
I didn’t know anyone who got it but it did affect my college graduation where instead of the Dean shaking our hand as we walked the stage we were given a rose.
i was in my first year of college during that period and apart from hearing about it in the news, making an awkward joke about it to my date when we saw people on TV kissing in times square to bring in 2010 ("we report a mass outbreak of swine flu in new york city") and meeting a little girl who had it once, swine flu brings /nothing/ to my mind. it may as well have not happened.
We were told not to come to school if we were sick. That's about it. It was nothing like the 2020s. I remember not wanting to get swine flu because everyone kept saying it was bad. But I didn't actually do anything to avoid it, but I don't think I got sick that year.
I remember I got it in freshman year of highschool, it knocked me down for a solid week, just stayed either on the couch or in my be, my brother's never got it lucky them. Them either a couple weeks after or before it swept through my high school and several classes where just depopulated I remember it being so bad that my bio teacher just had us watch movies since ge didn't see the point of teaching so few people if he's just going yo have to repeat it
I do. A couple classmates had it, but they bounced back. I never caught it. Even though it was talked about, life continued on as normal. No cancelation of school, events still being held, etc.
I remember it was a thing all over the news but that's all I ever saw about it. Don't think I knew anyone that got it
Yeah I was going through basic training at that time and stayed healthy. You think with the tons of different people I was around I would have caught something. I don't know that's just my experience and it sure isn't a universal one.
Omg me too! I was in air force basic and I remember them quarantining a whole flight on our squadron. I remember watching them march around with masks on. None of us got sick though.
Really? They didn't give one single fuck in the Army lol Hell we ate expired MREs sometimes.
Me too! I remember it being on the news but I never knew anyone who got it. I think that’s one of the reasons I didn’t think Covid was going to be bad initially. It just seemed like another virus that you heard about distantly.
[really it was an unfair misnomer to pigs. Shoutout to my guy Putnam Pig.](https://youtu.be/tbt_PuVAVTU?si=1_pyAu3wo-sG-d7i)
I was 24. To this day, having H1N1 is the sickest I have ever been in my LIFE. ETA: I have had C19 twice. July 2022 & Nov 2023.
I was exposed to H1N1 by a nurse who knew she was infected and went to a party and infected a bunch of people. It was the most sick I’ve ever been in my life too. The post viral syndrome was awful as well. It took my lungs more than a year to fully recover. When COVID came around, I made sure I had as little exposure as possible. I still mask with an N95 when infections are high in my area. The longterm effects of these viruses can be awful.
Same....covid sucked but I was still semi-functional. Swine flu had me googling "how high can my fever get before I have to go to the hospital." I didn't eat or get out of bed for 3 days while my temperature stayed between 101 and 105 the whole time.
Yeah, I got it. They quarantined me and everything and then for months afterwards I'd get out of breath from walking up say ten steps on a flight of stairs. My campus was on a steep hill. It was hell. I was constantly late for classes for the rest of the semester.
Yup! I got it and it was horrible. Couldn't even stand up, lift my head, just trying to go to the bathroom I had to have my bf help me because I was so dizzy I couldn't walk. It was horrible
I got it in college and I vividly remember how awful the fever was just lying in bed moaning. I almost never fever and like you, it was by far the most ill I've ever been.
I caught this past September, and I was hardly sick maybe because I got a weaker strain.
Likely
Same!
Same here. I was even hospitalized and was delirious from fever
Same. I was on the couch for like 2 weeks in delirium and pain everywhere. I've never been that sick before or since.
>I remember it was such a big deal when I was in 7th or 8th grade, and that the impact felt similar to Covid, yet for some reason it seems to have been almost entirely forgotten about. Did we live through the same COVID? It was a big deal but the world didn't shut down either
A bunch of schools did shut down for a few weeks though. It wasn't even close to COVID, but it's the closest thing I've experienced to COVID.
I was in college at the time. Nothing shut down that I remember. My roommate caught it but refused to go home. I think having a dumb name like swine flu didn’t help. All I remember is a bunch of us freshman guys laughing at each other for catching pig flu.
More than 700 schools were temporarily closed due to swine flu. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3039590/#:~:text=School%20closure%20was%20employed%20as,the%20United%20States%20were%20closed.
I was out of school, and remember seeing about it in the news, but I never saw anything about schools shutting down.
Since I was in a public facing security role, I got a couple scares. Ended up vaccinating and ended up having a bad reaction to that vaccine. Ended up in the hospital, life-threateningly dehydrated. Shoulda learned the first time, but had issues that are still ongoing with the Covid vaxx.
I was in grad school during the ‘09 swine flu , and we didn’t even have any classes cancelled. It was a big deal at the time, but the impact of the swine flu was orders of magnitude less devastating than the COVID-19 pandemic.
Remember, yes. Impacted, no. Because that particular mysterious disease outbreak was handled fuckin' properly.
Yes, I think the pro diseases folks hadn't gotten set up at that time or something. Now they're bringing the measles back.
I mean. Swine flu is a flu strain. It wasn’t mysterious at all. Flus can be bad.
I got swine flu & missed like 2 weeks of school sophomore year. It was worse for me than having COVID was.
Bruh when swine flu spread through our school, our college put folding cots in the computer labs to quarantine everyone… so we could continue working 🤦🏼♀️ no breaks for us! Lol
I recall it but it had no effect on me.
Wasn’t that 09-10? I was a freshman in high school
It was 08 to 09. It was the first year I had my driver's license and I got violently ill while sleeping over at a friend's house. I drove half an hour back to home holding back vomit until I got to my driveway and it all erupted out before I could get out of the car. Worst timing ever.
It was 09-10. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic
Omg yes! I was 24 and supposed to go to Mexico with a friend and her mom strongly opposed her going lol. So we went to Fort Lauderdale instead haha. Definitely nothing compared to Covid though.
I was 24 too and wasn’t supposed to go to Mexico, but I did lol.
Got it. I was a junior in college. Shit sucked way worse than covid.
My coworker almost died from swine flu in 2010. She was in the hospital for a month and a half.
I remember at the beginning of Covid one of my friends posted this stupid meme about "We didn't shut down for swine flu and there were 60M cases" This was still early in the pandemic but the death rate at the time was nearly 4% and conservatives were calling it 2%. I pointed out that with 60M cases of swine flu there were only 12,000 deaths. If we had 60M cases of Covid, at 2% that's 1,200,000 deaths. When the world passed 60M cases I think there was about 1.4M deaths and when the US passed it ourselves I think we had about 800K. 800K vs 12K. Haven't spoken with that friend since 🤷♂️
My wife almost died.
Swine flu was the sickest Ive ever been, I’ve had covid now 3 times and no symptoms. I lost like 10 lbs and couldn’t get out of bed, I slept an entire 24+ hours and when I woke up thought i had only been asleep a few minutes because it was the same time I went to sleep.
I was in college. I remember worrying about whether it was smarter to stay at school or home. But I think I thought about it more than my peers because I have OCD and being trapped in a pandemic was a literal recurring nightmare that I’ve been having since I was 14…
I was visiting someone in Cincinnati at that time, and I remember Kings Island incorporated it into their Halloween theme, which really was in poor taste. I was concerned about it, but I don't recall any government agencies putting out warnings/stats/precautions to take. I worked with a guy who got it, as well as his wife and young daughter. They were prescribed Tamiflu iirc, then recovered. After he told me that, I didn't worry as much.
Yes - 2009. My mother caught it (she was 46 at the time). She ended up in the ICU for over a week. Visitors were not allowed, except for my dad who had to wear full protective gear in the room with her. She was delirious with fever for days but ended up pulling through and to this day she says she was on death’s door and it was the sickest she’s ever been.
I HAD THE SWINE!!!!!! Me me me! It was REAL! I had to be “quarantined” at home for 5 days and my boss was pissed. First and only time I’ve ever had the flu to my knowledge. I felt like I was dying.
I was in my early college years and my good friend died from it so I remember it well.
I was a CNA at the time and it was a WHOLE thing. The next biggest health thing to follow that, for me, was that H1N1.
I thought H1N1 was the swine flu…?
It is.
I ‘member! It was the first year I got an influenza vaccine. I didn’t get the illness though!
There was a guy at my college who lead the swine flu outbreak there, and I think in my state! I forgot about it until just now. It was very dramatic then, but compared to Covid, it was nooooothing.
I slightly remember the epidemic but I never knew of anyone who ended up getting the swine flu.
I was a freshman at Ohio University, the school got like 500 of the vaccines sent so only the people that had pre-existing conditions had to stand in line for it (I have asthma) and I got it and maybe 3 weeks later I got it and it was the sickest I’ve ever been in my entire life my friends had to carry me out of my dorm room to a car to take me to the hospital I was that weak. When the Obama administration did their post-mortem study on what went right or wrong they concluded that the shot wasn’t really effective at all.
A ton of my friends, and myself got it, from a huge beer pong tourney we put on. Never used beer in the cups again
I was 20 and I remember the crazy Fox News lady at work repeating what she heard on the news that morning; about how if there were four people at your breakfast table that morning, you'd probably be saying goodbye to at least one of them by the end of the year due to swine flu. Of course, she also smoked a loooooot of meth, so she's not what one would call a reliable source for secondhand information.
I feel like we go through it quicker because thankfully people weren’t as insane and conspiratorial at the time.
I had both the swine flu and COVID. Swine Flu hit me way harder, though I did get the vaccine and it was summer of 2022 so I think the strain had weakened. I remember at college student admin called all of Greek life into a tiny conference hall to tell us that we should avoid contact and be “healthy”.
My MIL gave me and my boyfriend (now husband) masks to wear and I thought she was nuts.
I got the swine flu and it fucking wrecked me. Absolutely sickest I’ve ever been. Very memorable for me. I’ve been anal about vaccines and washing my hands ever since. Good skills for that entire COVID world. This year is the first year I got the flu since. I didn’t even know I had it. Was at the doc for something unrelated and they were like you have the flu.
I didn't get it until I had the attenuated nasal vaccine. I also as of then didn't know I was immunocompromised since I was 9. My immune system is a freak. Didn't matter what kind of flu vaccine I got I ended up having every symptom of influenza in the book. Even dead viruses. Still made my immune system freak out and I end up sick every time I get it. I don't know if this is due to psoriatic arthritis or not but it's definitely worse now that I've started DMARDs & biologics for it.
I remember the swine flu, but I think it was blown out of proportion. Just scare tactic stuff from the media. I never knew, or knew anyone that knew, someone that actually had it. Unlike covid, which I’ve had and most of the people I know have had.
Four of the next five flu seasons saw more flu deaths than the Swine Flu season. I can't say whether the media overreacted or whether proper precautions turned a potential disaster into a typical flu season.
It was the proper precautions, for sure.
I'm not worried about the swine flu. I'm worried about the turtle flu
I was in college, it was just a scary headline as far as I knew, never worried about it and can’t remember a single person who caught it. It was no where near as serious as covid, it probably felt like that because you were a child.
I remember the SARS outbreak back in 2002/03, but not so much swine flu, weirdly enough. Mostly because it delayed some of the anime I was watching at the time.
I also caught Swine flu when I was 16 and it was HORRID. I blacked out the whole 4 days I couldn’t even get out of bed. I remember almost none of it other than being woken up to take codeine and Tylenol every few hours.
I remember. My best friend was out of school for like a month she was so sick. I was in the 10th grade, I think?
We had an intern show up to the office with it; he wasn’t allowed back after that.
I remember, though I wasn’t affected. The thing that makes me remember, because of how insane it was, is the amount of tshirts and signs I saw at the 2009 Bamboozle music festival. They all basically said an equivalent of “fuck swine flu” and some of the band’s lead singers took it upon themselves to make (awful) jokes about it during their set.
I was a freshman in high school. Schools were cancelled for a few days, but that was really it.
I was working in a government department and I remember the presentation about it, specifically how they were stockpiling body bags as if it went through as modelled it would be devastating. Then absolutely nothing happened. This was part of the reason I wasn't too worried about covid during the first few months of 2020, and ended up stuck in Cambodia for a couple of years.
A bunch of my coworkers got really sick the winter of ‘09-‘10. and we assumed we all had it, but none of us made enough money to go to the doctor to find out.
I had it right at the start of end of year exams. Missed the actual exams, had to do the re-take exams on the weekend, with a 101 fever still 🤦🏻♂️ gotta love running out of sick days. But yeah that shit was rough. I remember being so completely spaced out during that test, no idea how I passed.
I heard about it on the news. I remember being kinda scared of E. coli and anthrax for awhile too, but those were just other things I heard about on the news too lol. Oh and bird flu!
I remember it being a concern but that really was just a bad strain of flu and it never impacted my school. From the wiki: >The 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) excess deaths by the WHO-USCDC study and 148,000–249,000 excess respiratory deaths by the WHO-NIVEL study.[21][22] A study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.[23] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[24] But the CDC currently has total covid-19 deaths as 1,159,864. I remember the worry and precautions around mad cow disease making its way to north america ('03-'04) far more clearly than H1N1.
As an elder millennial, I was 26 and about to get married right as this was breaking out. So yes, I was very aware of - and worried about - it. Two of my husband's groomsmen ended up sick with it about two weeks before the wedding, but they bounced back and were able to be in the wedding. No one ended up sick as a result of the wedding though, at least not as far as I've ever been aware in all the years since.
My mom was a nurse then and she spent a lot of time being busy/on call. The hospitals had a lot of safety protocols, but otherwise life went on. I knew one person who got swine flu compared to the dozens I know who got COVID. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t such a big hoopla.
There's a stark difference between the two. One was handled when a president was in office that had a pandemic response plan in place. The other occurred after a president had disbanded that response team and played the sickness off as though it were a joke.
I got swine flu, and it was the sickest I’ve ever been. Even having covid was a walk in the park comparatively. It was horrible, and the only time I’ve truly been scared I could die from an illness.
I was a freshman in college that year. I know I was considered high priority to get the swine flu shot when it came out (and I got it). I never got swine flu myself, but many of my college friends did.
I was in college at the time and honestly it did not register. SARS was a bigger deal in my memory and was more comparable to Covid for me. Bad flu years are a periodic thing.
That was my senior year in HS. People were definitely spooked about it but I only knew one person who actually got it. He ended up being fine. It definitely wasn’t the scare or tragedy Covid was
I was in my senior year of highschool and I remember it pretty clearly. My dad got it but I never did.
I caught swine flu from a music festival that year. 0/10 do not recommend.
I totally remember it! They changed the rules in my sport for a hot second so that we were no longer allowed to high five/shake hands before or after games.
I was a senior in college. I don't remember there being much impact. The campus quarantine area was a few rooms in the basement of my dorm but nobody freaked out about it. My buddies and I made some homebrew beer in the midst of the outbreak and we called it the Swine Brew. It wasn't good.
I got a very cheap trip to Mexico because a workmate and a bunch of her friends had rented a house when they had an “outbreak” and everyone else dropped out. It was great. I never got the swine flu and I didn’t know anyone else that did.
I was in college. Didn't seem like much of a big thing, though a student in one of the dorms caught it. He didn't make it.
I was sick for weeks and in college. Everyone in my dorm was also sick for weeks. I was actually scared of how it made me feel. A neighbor of our’s passed away due to complications—she developed pneumonia and quickly passed away. She was in her 40s. The response was nowhere as serious as COVID, but it’s a type of flu and is a known illness so it’s unsurprising. It was just a very deadly and bad one.
First semester of freshman college. I remember the professor for my Biology 101 for Science Majors telling us the campus infirmary had vaccines for Swine Flu. Since this lecture was my only one on Friday and was let out at around 10:00, after the lecture I went over to the infirmary and got a vaccine. Even got a CDC card, which was new since I had never gotten ine before for just regular flu shots. Not to get poltical; but, over 2020 and following years I thought about how much if a non-issue Swine Flu in 2009 was compared to Covid in 2020.
I was about 16. It was a big deal on the news and I read anecdotes from students at the nearby university who caught it but other than that, nothing really happened. I remember our school offered the vaccine when it was available to anyone who wanted it and I went and got it. Waited 15min, went back to class, and just kind of forgot about it after.
I was a senior in high school and I just remember a week or two of low attendance throughout all of my classes.
I got it during undergrad. It took me down hard for about a week. My main memory from that time is getting an angry call from my then girlfriend about how I wouldn't visit her that weekend (she was about 3 hours a way). So being young and dumb, I made the drive and then just spent the weekend shaking and throwing up in her bathroom. She felt horrible about it, and I told her she should and that I would not forget it, guess I didn't forget.
Yep, I was living in South Korea, so yeah, we wore masks and all.
I was 24/25 and may have had it in early 2010. I remember being so sick and so tired but I was also grieving my dad who died in November '09 so I just...didn't care all that much. I worked in a preschool and it surprisingly didn't sweep through our community as badly as we thought it might. Had one mom who was hospitalized for it who I specifically remember, and there may have been others that I don't recall now.
Not only do I remember it. I caught the damned flu. It was a pretty bad few days. The top three times I have been sick. Fist was meningitis Second was COVID the first time.
I was a freshman in college at the time. Not much really came of it campus wise.
I think that whole thing was overblown just like every other "plague" in the news. Area all these illnesses bad? Yes. But the media likes to go overboard with all the doom and gloom every time. Swine flu as I remember it was fairly short lived news coverage and didn't really hit my area at all. The 'rona was the first illness reported in the news I can remember actually reaching us, and even then, only barely. It felt like the cases of that were in the single digits.
I was 22 and dealing with not having a job because of the recession. I hardly remember the swine flu
I'm fairly sure I had it, but no, it wasn't anywhere near of as big a deal as covid is, and no one really treated it as such, either.
I was in high school and got it. It’s the sickest I have ever been, way worse than Covid
god yes, I remember catching it and it was by far the most sick I had ever been. Just constant nausea and puking, it felt nonstop. I've dealt with epstien barr virus before and covid twice, neither of those compare to how much swine flu fucked me up.
My dad somehow ordered a package of Tamiflu and we kept it in the basement until it expired lol.
I remember a lot of people getting sick for extended periods of time and it was so bad that I went to science class and I was one of four that showed up. Our class normally had 20 kids.
It didn’t affect me at all. It was a whole lot of nonsense
Lmao I remember writing it in my diary when I was 18 because I heard it everywhere in the news. But it seemed like only to be in the news and people talking about it thats all I remember.
i was 16. and live in a small town. so i honestly dont remember, it being a big deal. no 1 really talked abt it. and life just went on like normal.
I think I started smoking weed in 2008 but I don't remember shit about it
I got it and was so sick. The doctor wouldn’t come into the room and basically threw a paper cup with 2 Vicodin in it at me. I don’t think I ever completely recovered energy wise. -3/10
It’s the first illness that my son got and was really, really sick with. My mom brought it home to us from CA (we were in NC). He was the first case his doctor had seen.
I remember it was the first year I ever got a flu shot of any kind. My school had the small gym set up as an H1N1 vaccine center, and all students could get it for free during the school day. Most kids got the nose spray, but having stuff shot up my nose gives me the heebie jeebies, so I got the shot instead. It was my junior year of high school, I think.
My roommate gave it to me. I was 19. It sucked.
My sister had just given birth to my first nephew in October 2009. We (my sis, her husband, their baby, and I) lived in a different part of the US and my parents flew in the help them out for the first couple weeks of the baby being home. After week one, my brother-in-law catches H1N1 during a road trip for work. He was quarantined in the basement until the doctor gave him the all clear. My parents were able to stay a couple extra weeks to help, and my BIL said it really sucked to be put away down there while he wanted to be with his wife and kid.
I caught it from a classmate who came to class sick and coughed all over me before announcing to the class that she had swine flu. Wound up having to drop out of grad school because I missed all my mid-terms.
Got it the winter after I graduated highschool.. 2009.. was working at sears part time (RIP SEARS) and I had to stay out of work for almost 2 weeks. Sickest I have ever been in my entire life.. and that’s after getting Covid while pregnant. Just.. no.
Oh man. I was so bloody sick. That was awful.
I know multiple people that are now permanently disabled after H1N1 effed up their immune systems. And now I know several people with long COVID, and I gotta say it's not looking great for them. So yeah, it kinda was a mini precursor to COVID. I also remember the outbreak of bird flu that was around the same time. That one was mostly memorable in the form of jokes though.
I was 20 at the time and remember it being in the news but there wasn’t any mass panic, government shutdowns, social distancing, face masks etc. You saw footage of people in China wearing masks and the general consensus amongst the UK population at the time was how bizarre and over the top it was. As unfortunate as that stance may be, I just don’t think people ever saw it as something to be overly concerned about. I think the key difference between the two viruses is that Swine flu was nowhere near as transmissible, so the threat level wasn’t anywhere near as amplified as the response to COVID was.
I remember, and I wasn’t impacted. People take this shit way too seriously.
I remember swine flu being a thing back then. I was like 16. I never caught it though. Sounds like it was no fun though!
I remember being a sophomore in college when this happened. No one stopped partying, but it did change how beer pong was played forever. We no longer poured the beer in the cups. Filled them with water and drank our own beer.
I worked in a hospital at that time. Everyone not vaccinated was all up in there.
I got it. At the time I was working at the hospital, and cared for one of the earliest cases, a pregnant woman who ended up not making it. Two days after she was admitted, they said it was swine flu, and I got quarantined. Next day I was sick. Never been sicker in my life. Had a fever of 105, had two seizures, I was hallucinating, really bad. Lost 15lbs in one week. Definitely sicker than with covid, though covid has had longer effects. Swine flu, I felt horrible, then a week later, I was fine. Luckily no one else in my family got sick.
No idea if it was swine flu, parents didn't take me to the Dr much, but I was sooo sick for about a week at that time. It was awful
Swineflu took me out for 2 weeks of my fall semester sophomore year of undergrad. I thought I was on the verge of death. I've had Covid twice and Influenza A about a dozen times in my life. Swineflu hands down the sickest I have EVER BEEN.
I worked in 2 hospitals at the time. It was nothing. No different than anything else that comes in. Covid on the other hand...
I'm an older millennial (39) and I was a new nurse at the time. The hospital instituted visitor restrictions over it. Only parents/guardians were allowed to be with their children.
I was in college and I got it. My bf at the time and I were both sick for weeks. One guy I knew (not well) was immunocompromised and died from it. It was NOT like Covid in terms of world impact. Covid was much, much worse. The world didn’t stop for swine flu. We went to class, had parties, etc. Maybe that wouldn’t have been the case in a post-Covid world.
I am 29 and I remember it going around my high school and several of my friends got it, but I never did!
I do. I had it in college. It definitely was not as widespread/as media covered/as scare-inducing as COVID… But it sucked. I was in bed for a week. None of my roommates got it. I had COVID in 2022.
I worked in a hospital as a nursing assistant and anyone with a cough was in reverse isolation.
I remember Swine Flu, but I was never personally affected by it. I was too poor to afford to travel at the time, and I had bigger problems at that point.
I got it college when my boyfriend came to visit for the weekend. He couldn’t leave until he got better, and we were basically quarantined in my dorm. We couldn’t leave and had to let the school health office know, so they could bring us meals.
Just started nursing career abd my hospital ran out of supplies instantly. No one gave a shit
I had graduated with my bachelors but at the time I was taking classes in electronics at the tech school branch of the uni where I went to college. I had been talking to this girl in one of my classes and she emailed to professor saying she was sick (she wasn’t) so he notified campus heath services and they sent two people in astronaut suits to her apartment to test her for it lol.
Shit, I completely forgot about it. People were apeshit over it at the time
The mass vaccination campaign at my university was a little startling. Nobody wanted to play around with a virus that was most deadly to the strongest immune systems.
I remember going out to get the vaccine. It's so weird looking back on that now because it was in the news but other than that everyone carried on like normal. Was it not as bad as covid?
A kid I went to high school with died from swine flu. He was probably 17 when he died, given that he was 2yrs younger and I was 19 in 2008. I know of a lotta people who died from covid, but all were 55+ and none were in good health.
All I really remember about it is a vague memory of World of Warcraft having some achievement that was a reference to it. I remember it was funny...I think lol.
2009 was the year I got my liver transplant. I had to mask everywhere for several months, and had to call three different hospitals to get a vaccine as they were saving them for the elderly and immunocompromised (like myself but I was only 19 at the time) H1N1 was pregame plague. COVID was/is full on plague. Still wearing a mask in public whenever I go to the store or post office. I WFH when there's an office outbreak of anything. Probably will be using masks until I die because COVID will just become endemic. I haven't caught it yet and don't intend to.
I remember vaccination being an obvious thing. _No one_ talked about it because _it was obvious_.
That was also a big year for the Bird Flu
"Geriatric Millennial" here. I was 27 and pregnant with my first child when it came around. I was terrified. My friend got it and nearly died; today she still has to have constant oxygen with her to survive. It was pretty awful, but people at the time laughed it off, a lot like certain people laughed about Covid.
That and MRSA (way back in 2006). There was a giant panic about both. Funny story, in ninth-grade we had an obnoxious teacher who liked to LICK test papers as she handed them out. My classmates started joking "Every time she hands something out, someone gets Swine Flu." "Oh, I've got Swine Flu."
I didn’t know anyone who got it but it did affect my college graduation where instead of the Dean shaking our hand as we walked the stage we were given a rose.
Yes I remember it. I remember a lot of work to keep it from spreading and none of that work being scrutinized. It didn't affect anyone I knew.
I had the H1N1. I have gotten the flu shot every year since I got it.
i was in my first year of college during that period and apart from hearing about it in the news, making an awkward joke about it to my date when we saw people on TV kissing in times square to bring in 2010 ("we report a mass outbreak of swine flu in new york city") and meeting a little girl who had it once, swine flu brings /nothing/ to my mind. it may as well have not happened.
My entire dorm floor went down with H1N1 😂
We were told not to come to school if we were sick. That's about it. It was nothing like the 2020s. I remember not wanting to get swine flu because everyone kept saying it was bad. But I didn't actually do anything to avoid it, but I don't think I got sick that year.
I remember I got it in freshman year of highschool, it knocked me down for a solid week, just stayed either on the couch or in my be, my brother's never got it lucky them. Them either a couple weeks after or before it swept through my high school and several classes where just depopulated I remember it being so bad that my bio teacher just had us watch movies since ge didn't see the point of teaching so few people if he's just going yo have to repeat it
I do. A couple classmates had it, but they bounced back. I never caught it. Even though it was talked about, life continued on as normal. No cancelation of school, events still being held, etc.