Sharon Gillenwater is still recovering from a flu that she's had for a month.
"It's been hell because I'm a startup at the very early stage, so I'm basically doing everything myself," Gillenwater said. "The work can't wait. We're on Internet time."
Gillenwater, the CEO of Fidget, an email newsletter portal, is responsible for partnerships, marketing, distribution, and content development, in addition to managing 18 employees.
Fortunately, all of her staff telecommutes, so no one else caught it.
"My biggest fear was that my editor would get it and then I'd have to do her work too," Gillenwater said.
The flu has been particularly nasty this year, turning scores of healthy workers into miserable blobs plagued with harsh coughs, sore throats, headaches, fever, and intense exhaustion.
Gillenwater, unable to get an appointment with her doctor, was referred to another office where she had to wait in line with fifty other sufferers for three and a half hours to see a physician.
"They told me I had to rest, but that's the one thing I can't do," she said.
Because of the fast pace of startups, some employees continue to work despite the fact that they are ill.
Employees at Varsitybooks.com spread the flu to each other by working when they were sick, said communications director Jodi Gershoni.
"We've definitely been hit by it," Gershoni said.
For some companies, the illness is promoting telecommuting.
"Having Net access at home, people are able to do their jobs and not necessarily be in office," said Jennifer Pesci, marketing director for Sightsound.
Pesci said that of their 28 employees, at least five have been sick.
Dr. Julie Cahill, an internist at Rossmoor Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, said that the best prevention to catching the virus is washing your hands and taking vitamin C.
But the flu vaccine won't necessarily protect you.
"The fact that many people are getting ill who have had the flu vaccine suggests that it might not be an influenza virus but another [less severe] type of virus," she said.
Influenza or not, the illness is becoming a worldwide problem.
The epidemic has become so serious in Great Britain that virus-stricken folks are filling up the hospitals. Hospital admissions have increased 30 percent in the last three weeks. Patients waiting for non-emergency operations, already waiting for months, are being delayed even longer.
The Badger-Hawkeye region of the American Red Cross, which supplies blood to nearly 100 hospitals in the Midwest, has seen a decline in the amount of blood collected.
"Drives are coming in under goal, and that's unusual," said Laura Maier, communications director for the region. The trend started the first week of January.
"The Midwest [has] traditionally dedicated blood donors," Maier said. "Unless they're sick, and then they can't [donate]."
And as the flu virus stalks and infects the general populace, its every move is being tracked on the Net.
ZymeTx is recording the outbreaks as they occur. The research company developed a diagnostic test for influenza and receives feedback from doctors using the test.
The results are posted on its National Flu Surveillance Network, and are continuously updated.
"Our goal is to have a representative sample in every locale that will give us a highly accurate picture of viral outbreaks in the area," said Carl Gibson, CFO of the Oklahoma City-based company.
The company announced a partnership with weather.com on Tuesday, hoping the Internet site will help disseminate its information on influenza.
"That's the easiest way to get information to the public," Gibson said. "I can't imagine any other way of doing it."
*Reuters contributed to this report. *
