TikTok’s ”Frat Flu” Goes Viral in More Ways Than One
People are starting to talk about their experiences getting sick post-pandemic. Is it really just a cold?
In early September, Anannya Akella, 19, went out for a night of clubbing. Along with friends, she made her way to Mykonos Bleu, a rooftop bar in Chelsea. Akella was attending a South Asian club night, and, as a Bollywood dancer herself, she was prepared to dance her heart out.
“It was amazing,” she said. “It was honestly the first time since COVID and quarantine where I was just with my friends and didn’t think about anything and had a really good time.”
It was supposed to be like any normal night out, like the “before times. “The semester had just started, and it was still warm outside. During the 2020–21 academic year, Akella had been a “COVID freshman”. She had been in New York City since the beginning of the year, but that was before vaccines. Sophomore year was going to be different — at least that’s what she thought.
A few days later, Akella and her roommate fell sick. The symptoms were average: a sore throat, fever, and nasal congestion. It just seemed like a cold. But then, it lasted weeks — and soon, months. At the end of November, she finished recovering from borderline bronchitis, pneumonia, and laryngitis. So, how did she get from a seemingly mild cold to urgent care?
Since the fall semester began, college students around the country have been posting on social media about the “frat flu.”. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are flooded with posts about the frat flu. #fratflu has 15.5 million views on TikTok. Many of the videos describe being initially dismissive of their symptoms, writing it off as “frat flu” then finding out months later that they had sinus infections like bronchitis, pneumonia, and laryngitis. Akella’s case is not an isolated one. But in the wake of a pandemic with similar symptoms, is the “frat flu” more than just an online trend?
Dr. Jun Mitsumoto, Medical Director of the NYU Student Health center, says, “We experienced a historically quiet flu season in 2020–2021 due to the global social response to Covid-19”. A Center for Disease Control study found that in the 2020–21 season, 0.2% of respiratory specimens tested were positive for influenza. During the three years prior, the number was between 26.2% and 30.3%.
Surabhi Yadav, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in Public Health at NYU, commented on the change, and says it’s too early to tell what this means. “There are a lot of factors in play here,” she added. “People could also be posting about getting sick more because they’re more conscious about these symptoms now.”
“This year, we are likely to see a more typical flu season due to the increased levels of social engagement and travel,” according to Dr. Mitsumoto. “However, every flu season is difficult to forecast and “typical” can mean unpredictable.”
Avni Kalur, a sophomore at the University of California, San Diego, is another student who experienced long-term sickness in the fall session. Kalur got sick early in October and recovered recently, in early December. She is familiar with the frat flu trend. “All my friends and I claimed to have the frat flu, but it was bronchitis and a sinus infection.” Looking back, she says she thinks many people did not take the sickness seriously enough early on. “I think we made the sickness too casual. Nobody took it seriously and everyone was passing illnesses back to each other,” she added. “We all had much more serious issues than just a cold, but frat flu minimized it in our heads.”
Universities have felt the blow of many students all being sick at the same time. For students like Akella and Kalur, school policies were not necessarily helpful. Akella describes the struggle. “It’s like, in the time that we live right now, it’s either you have COVID or nothing. So, being sick the way I was was like an incredible hindrance. Because the policies were only updated for COVID patients and everything else is quite outdated.”
Accessing care at school has been difficult for students as well. At NYU, the Student Health Center does not allow students to make appointments for “cold, flu, or Covid-19 symptoms”.
She notices a discrepancy between what kind of messages her school puts out and how her academic life is actually impacted. “It was just a hard and fast rule, if you’re coughing, if you have any kind of sickness, don’t come to class. But then, the actual grades and absences and transcripts didn’t reflect that.”
Akella’s life was also impacted beyond academics. “There was an immediate change from September to now.” She remembers feeling isolated, as well as being mentally drained and stressed.
While it may be too soon to tell whether the frat flu even has scientific basis, it is an Internet phenomenon that only seems to be growing in popularity. Dr. Mitsumoto comments on what we do know: “the same reasonable precautions that have protected us in the past — getting a flu shot, hand hygiene, staying home and wearing a mask when sick — remain very important today.” Whether the frat flu is real or not, people’s views on getting sick have changed post-pandemic. Are they here to stay?
