Who gets the flu and why?

So I looked up to see what is considered habits of those who don't get the flu and I don't think I fall into this..

Things like exercise... my daughter does, although I am not a couch potato..I exercise here and there. Stress...I have a high stress job. Diet..I do tend to eat healthy but am not obsessive about it. Hand washing... again I do normal hand washing but I am far from obsessive about it. Getting enough sleep...really I am a mom with a demanding job ...what is sleep?

So if I fit the type of lifestyle that should catch the flu ... I don't get a flu shot..and my poor daughter should be the opposite ...why?

I don't know, but I have had the flu....now that I have an impaired immune system....I take as many flu shots they tell me to get.,...I really don't want to ever have it again.

Influenza most commonly spreads through aerosol means--coughing, sneezing, even just talking. The photo below is well-known:



It can also spread through surface contact--someone sneezes or coughs, covering their mouth and/or nose with a hand, and then leaves a contaminate on a door handle, a sink spigot, or some other such commonly used surface.

Children in schools often prove more susceptible because they are crowded together more than people in a workplace, and they often don't do anything to prevent the kind of aerosol contamination shown in the picture above. Diseases, mild and severe, commonly spread more rapidly in schools than in other venues. I don't know, of course, but I suspect that that explains why your daughter succumbed, but you didn't.

Does the subway count as being closed in? I once had some bone head cough directly on my head.

And I do have a touch of it today probably from caring for my teen. However my team my is a mere 100.3 where hers is 103.0

The baseline for temp is usually given as 98.6--so yours is not terribly elevated. Yeah, subway riding is not good. Some people in Japan and Korea wear surgical masks when they go into crowded public areas, like the subway, where they really pack them in. (The uniformed men on the right in the image below are "subway packers," whose job it is to get as many people on the subway as possible.)



You'd need to wear goggles and a mask to really avoid contamination--there are tubes that run from the corners of your eyes to the nasal pharynx, called the puncta. Tears drain through the punctum in the corner of each eye--so pathogens can get in, too.