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My friend's son had flu like symptoms last week. She has invited us over to her house to play this week. I DO NOT want my kids to get the flu too! When is it safe to resume our playdates with her and her son?

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Quote from http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/disease.htm:

How long is a person with flu virus contagious?

The period when an infected person is contagious depends on the age and health of the person. Studies show that most healthy adults may be able to infect others from 1 day prior to becoming sick and for 5-7 days after they first develop symptoms. Some young children and people with weakened immune systems may be contagious for longer than a week.

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 Oh wow, I was thinking probably about 3 days...yikes! Thanks for the info. Too bad you can't take some sort of home test to tell if you are contagious or not, that would be awesome. – Sabrina Sep 24 at 17:59
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I'm not saying it's bad to keep your kids away from children who have the flu, but I would remember that children need to exercise their immune system so to speak. When they enter school, it will be an onslaught of bacteria and viruses. A common theory right now is that this necessity have a completely sterile home environment is causing more harm than good.

Immune System Development

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"children need to exercise their immune system" Valid point, could you add a reference? – Tammy 0 secs ago – Tammy♦ Sep 26 at 0:54
Your Immune System Development link has some good generic information, but I think this link has information more relevant to your point: usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/hmm/00-01winter/germs.html – Scott♦ Sep 26 at 2:18
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I just read a health report that said the cough is the most contagious part of sickness since it is where the germs are spread indiscriminately. The same report said that people are very contagious for 5-7 days after their fever breaks. Yikes, all of these kids are coming back to school the day after their fever...I kept mine out of school for the week after his fever, just to be sure to not spread whatever he had. Good luck this winter.

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 Can you provide a link? – dave0 Oct 9 at 20:42

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