What the new 'superflu' feels like

This is what the new 'superflu' feels like

I was in the middle of writing this newsletter when I had a coughing fit so sudden and severe that, when I looked in the mirror, I had partially burst a blood vessel in my eye. Welcome, everyone, to the "superflu".

My household is laid up with it this week, and I've had to cancel everything. I'm just thankful it's happening now and not over Christmas itself, but to say it's "unpleasant" would be the world's biggest understatement. Here's what it really feels like…

My symptoms started on Saturday during the Crisis at Christmas carol concert at Southwark Cathedral, where the BBC's Clive Myrie and Dame Imelda Staunton both did readings. It was beautifully festive, but I had that sudden panic you get when you know you're going to cough and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Since then, both my daughter and I have had fevers of 39C, as well as sweats, shivers, sneezing fits, intense tiredness and muscle aches. My skin feels overly sensitive, and even clothing hurts. My hands and feet are freezing, and my bones ache so much that all I can manage is lying down. I also have a banging headache, a constantly streaming nose and a throat that feels scraped raw. And that dreaded cough.

It's hard to tell, though, what you've got at this time of year (here's a handy list of symptoms to help differentiate a cold from the flu) – so we did Covid tests, just to be sure. They were negative, but we then went to the doctor to check for chest infections. He took one look at us, told us it was the so-called "superflu", and warned us to stay at home and away from other people, drink plenty of water (we've lost our appetite, but he emphasised that hydration is the most important thing) and rest. He also said he'd had it himself – twice – in the past month, while my daughter's friends have been sending her videos of half-empty classrooms. In her form at high school, only 14 out of 30 kids were present today.

If it feels like everyone you know has got something, you're not wrong: this superflu season has been described as "beyond catastrophic" and it is pushing our already-pressured NHS to the brink. I spoke to a doctor friend who told me the flu outbreak "is as bad as reported" and said that, at her A&E on Friday, she didn't see anyone who "didn't test positive – and some were very sick". Still, the spread of the virus (and the severity of the symptoms) is in keeping with previous years – so there's no real need to panic. The reason it seems so bad this season is that it started about a month earlier than usual with a new strain (influenza A/H3N2), leading to a surge in cases. We're also seeing more children and teenagers affected due to high contact rates at schools and other institutions.

It's definitely a nasty one (most of us will get flu at least once every five years, apparently), and I do hope you're all managing to avoid it. If you do happen to get it, drop me a line from your sickbed and I'll respond from mine. The advice from the NHS remains the same in the meantime: rest, keep warm, drink plenty of fluids and take paracetamol or ibuprofen to help with fever, aches and pains. Don't be afraid to call NHS 111 or get an urgent GP appointment if you are over 65, pregnant, worried about your child's symptoms, have long-term medical conditions or a weakened immune system, or if symptoms do not improve after seven days. And do try to get a flu vaccine!

Enjoying the Independent Women newsletter?

I'd love to hear how you're all keeping in the run-up to Christmas.

You may also have noticed that the Independent Women newsletter has had a swanky new redesign! What do you think? Do you like it? Do get in touch and let me know. Email me at victoria.richards@independent.co.uk – your voice helps shape the newsletter.

Or, if you want advice on love, work, family and relationships? Email me at dearvix@independent.co.uk.

VIX'S PICKS

Elizabeth Day: What Rob Reiner taught me about love

From crossed wires at a first meeting to the deep love that comes from the mutual acceptance of flaws and all, novelist Elizabeth Day – host of the popular podcast How to Fail – explains how the director, who was tragically found dead at his home in Los Angeles this week, taught her lessons about romance, moral courage and what really matters.

"I love When Harry Met Sally to such an extent that I have now watched it countless times at many different moments in my life. It has influenced the way I see the world so deeply that I can no longer pinpoint one single occasion as having any greater magnitude than another. Instead, the movie has become part of the philosophical fabric of my worldview."

One year on from the rape trial that shocked the world

This time tomorrow, it will have been one year since the verdicts were reached in the Gisèle Pelicot rape trial verdicts. On 19 December 2024, Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men were sentenced for the mass rape and assault of Gisèle Pelicot while she was unconscious. It was a case that shocked the world and left many of us questioning the men around us. I write about it here (do check in on Friday to read it). 

How to give up drinking this party season

Christmas can be a pretty boozy affair – so what do you do if you're trying to cut down? Thankfully, we have the delightful Helen Coffey giving us all her top tips... Click here to read more (spoiler: Helen and I danced with 'chicken wing arms' at The Independent's office Christmas party and we didn't need a drop!)

The truth about 'trad wives'

This week, we're lucky enough to have a guest post from comedian, writer and performer Leigh Douglas on the truth behind the "trad wife" movement:

Trad wives have always been a part of the myth of America. Since the Founding Fathers wrote the United States Constitution, the wives of white, Christian men have followed their husbands to remote, isolated places and tried to feed, clothe and educate their children without community support or social infrastructure. One can imagine that surviving a winter in an isolated cabin somewhere in the American West with no adult to speak to besides the man you call your husband was a frightening experience for scores of anonymous women whose stories we will never know. The world stage has never been available to these women, until now.

Trad wives have taken the story of the pioneer woman and spun a mythic, romantic yarn. They extol the virtues of women giving up their 'selfish' careers to become wives, mothers and homemakers. Yet, by participating in the influencer economy, trad wives are living in late-stage capitalism as much as any of us. To purchase enough land and livestock to be self-sustaining in 2025, you need inherited wealth. Founding a homestead today is a luxury lifestyle. They are harkening back to a past that never existed, when rather than scraping together an existence in harsh conditions, pioneer women baked cookies and booked brand deals.

Every American child is taught about the concept of 'manifest destiny'. That is, the doctrine that American pioneers – the men and women who got on horses and wagons and set off on the Oregon Trail – were ordained to spread the Protestant faith across the continent, on a mission from God to settle Native American land. Like the pioneers, the trad wife believes she has been chosen by God to civilise us. Social media is the ministry of the trad wife, and she is spreading the gospel of traditional gender roles. She is not an independent woman; she is a vessel for her husband's independence. She preaches self-reliance as the ultimate virtue (except, of course, when self-determination stretches to include her own independent thought or bodily autonomy).

In a world where many women still carry the mental load of running a home and raising children, the trad wife is compelling. Imagine for a moment you are a mother of young children scrolling through social media as you hurry home from work. You stumble upon a trad wife spending all day with her children, dolling herself up for her husband and making beautiful meals for her family. You begin to compare this picture with the outfit you threw on while barely awake that morning, the quick weeknight tea you'll throw together later, and the hour or two you'll get with your kids before bedtime.

The power of the trad wife lies in 'mummy guilt'. Their message is clear: if you really loved your kids, you would stay home with them. Their rhetoric plays on women's deepest insecurities. If you 'let yourself go', they warn, your husband will stop loving you, and it will be your fault when he leaves. Not only are all the ways you feel like you're failing true, your inadequacies pose an existential threat to your family. The big bad wolf knocking on your door is no longer cholera, a skirmish with Native peoples, or a deathly winter storm. No, the threat to your family is you. The only way to experience freedom from fear is to submit to a good man's will and fulfil his feminine fantasy.

What do you think about trad wives? Do you agree with Leigh? Do you think it is a harmless return to "traditional" family values, or an insidious anti-feminist movement? I'd love to know!

ROTUS: Receptionist of the United States is at the Park Theatre in London from 20 January – 7 February 2026. Tickets are available here.

I'm feeling incredibly anxious and stressed about Christmas – and there's still two weeks to go! The reason I'm worried is because I have to go and spend it with my family: my mum and dad and my sisters (plus our partners and children) and we just don't get on. We never have.

For one thing, my family are completely different to me. We have completely different political outlooks – they call me "woke" and I find their constant "casual" racism offensive and outdated. They say they're just"jokes" and accuse me of being a "snowflake" and of not having a sense of humour, but I just don't find it funny to punch down.

I'm dreading the kind of conversations that are bound to come up around the Christmas dinner table...

The 'superflu'... and you

Last week, I asked you... Did you have a positive experience in hospital giving birth?

Here's what you said:

Very evenly split for most of you – perhaps it shows how widely and how varied our experiences have become in the NHS in recent years?

In our new-look poll, I'd love to find out how you feel this week (literally). Click here to tell me: Have you had the superflu?

I received this thoughtful email from Deb this week, who wrote in response to my piece on giving birth on a labour ward where the floor was teeming with cockroaches:

Not a new thing, sadly. I gave birth in Charing Cross Hospital (53 years ago when it was still in Charing Cross) and the post-natal ward had to be fumigated twice a week. There was even a cockroach in the bath when I was prepping for labour! I think visitors were more startled than patients to see them scuttling round the wards. Old buildings, what can I say?

And one woman with the username morganedebroceliande commented on the state of labour wards in the UK:

The worst is that this abuse of women giving birth is not new. I gave birth 40 years ago in an NHS hospital in the north. My midwife – whose job it was to care for me and my needs – was a sadistic woman who enjoyed making me cry, by being horrible to me. She was constantly talking to my newborn, telling her I was a useless mother and that I won't be able to take care of her...etc... if confronted, I am sure she would have pleaded it was a joke! Banter! But I did not even have the strength to confront her. Everybody in the ward must have known what she was doing, but she was allowed to carry on. God knows how many women got post natal depression under her 'care'.

Meanwhile, Julie got in touch from Fort Myers in Florida to share some of her favourite insults, after we were all talking about Donald Trump telling a female journalist to be "quiet, piggy" a few weeks back:

Duke DeBroke, Lord Lowlife, Sir Sorry Sac O'Schitt is one of my favourites. His daughter-in-law is Pisa Schitt who can only cook Irish food, Italian-style!

I love hearing from you – please do get in touch and tell me what you liked, didn't like (and what you'd like to see more of) in this newsletter.

I absolutely loved Liars by Sarah Manguso – it was one of the most intimate and devastating portraits of a marriage that I've ever seen in print.

So, for the brand-new Independent Women book club in January, I've decided to recommend we all read another by the same author: Very Cold People. It's been compared to the likes of My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Here's the blurb to lure you in...

Once home to the country's most illustrious families, Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is now an unforgiving place awash with secrets. Forged in this frigid landscape, Ruthie learns how the town's prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history and how silence often masks a legacy of harm – from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her school friends.

THIS WEEK...

I'm reading

Evenings and Weekends, a novel by Oisín McKenna. It begins with a whale beached on the Thames – and then brings the sticky heat of London to life. I adored it: it's not often you get a queer love story breaking into the mainstream. A big tick from me for its gorgeous pathos and the characterisation of the love between mothers and sons. 

I'm eating

A lot of food that I cooked but now haven't been able to give to people, because of the dreaded superflu! I'd pre-prepared a vegan feast to share with friends – only to have to cancel the dinners I was looking forward to hosting. Here are five simple vegan recipes I'll be trying next time I'm well enough...

At The Independent, we've always believed journalism should do more than describe the world – it should try to improve it.

This Christmas, we're asking for your help again as we launch our new campaign with the charity Missing People – the SafeCall appeal.

Every year, more than 70,000 children in the UK are reported missing. The misery that follows – for the child, for the family, for the community – is often hidden. Too many of these young people have nowhere to turn when they need help most. SafeCall will change that. Our goal is to raise £165,000 to help Missing People launch this new, free service – designed with the input of young people themselves – offering round-the-clock support, advice and a route to safety.

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