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thosewhocannetworkd t1_ixujgfm wrote

Reply to comment by KauaiCat in How soon after exposure is the flu contagious? by AcJc_0604

So if people caught influenza during Thanksgiving on Thursday, would it be a bad or typically higher risk move to go out to eat Saturday (today) night after Thanksgiving because most of the infected are now at peak concentration, timeline wise, but not feeling their symptoms yet? Or was yesterday the worst day to go out, because today they’ll wake up feeling ill? Asking cuz have dinner date tonight and concerned about influenza

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KauaiCat t1_ixuqyeg wrote

There is a statistical distribution for all of these time periods and a lot could depend on things like the infectious dose you received, your immune system's abilities, the particular strain of the virus, how susceptible your cells are to infection with the virus (e.g. do your cells have a high concentration of the receptor the virus is looking for to gain access to your cells?), etc.

I said "Shortly after reaching peak concentration, you begin feeling symptoms", but this is not correct.

Typically peak concentration would hit shortly *after* feeling symptoms rather than before. However, you will be highly infectious a up to several hours before feeling symptoms for influenza.

The high probability zone of being being contagious before symptoms is somewhere around 36-48 hours after exposure for influenza, but someone below mentioned that it could be much shorter for influenza B.

This is just where most people will be contagious. It's possible you would be contagious 24 hours after exposure or not until 72 hours or more.

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