Question Asian fevers. Why the panic?

Why does anytime a character in an Asian novel get a fever it's treated as a deadly situation. In the west most of us get a fever we just keep hydrated and rest. Some of us even try to work. So what's the deal? Why does it create such a panic? Or is it just an old trope lazy authors use?

 

Pretty sure there's been some scary waves of birdflu not to mention in many asian countries the population density is much higher making infectious diseases spread faster.

 

Asia has a history with fevers=death.

 

Are we talking about modern day stories or historical ones?, that makes a pretty huge difference.

 

You mean in modern day novels or those cultivation type novels set in ancient times? If it’s ancient times then isn’t it cos the commoners don’t have the medical knowledge to know that a fever isn’t that bad and rest/water is all they need.

Or the fever they get isn’t the same as what the westerners from modern times get. The novel fever is more serious and deadly maybe.

 

It's because for some reason every Japanese persons deadly weakness is the common cold. Same way that Japanese people apparently faints if they're in the bath for more than like 15 minutes.

Pretty sure it's just mostly because the author needs a reason for other characters to fawn over another character, without having to give that character a deadly disease. I've atleast never personally had a cold that hit me out of nowhere, made me have to stay in bed in fear of my own life for 24 hours, and then being completely fine the next day, which is how it usually happens in mangas and novels.

I've never even taken medicine for colds, and i still live

 

google or search about spanish flu .
pre modern era , fever can be considered scary . not only asian , but around the world .
it is less scary now because we know what the cause of the fever and act accordingly. but back then ? you dont even know the reason you got fever. it is because overwork, flu or even some deadly disease ? they never know for sure.

 

I know my parents worry a lot when I get sick but that’s because I live alone and in the case that I die, my roommates wouldn’t even notice until I start rotting.....I’m not sure about the characters in the novel but whenever I get sick, I will fever and it will be at least 39°C, pretty much completely bedridden, unable to get food or water, barely able to see so....

 

It's an author sickness. I believe they're not knowledgeable enough to get a random sickness in the internet (or plainly lazy) and makes a vague magical illness that only works (and cures) by the author's hands to keep medical arguments out.
They're authors not doctors but there are still people that will question their choice of setting so this saves them from being looked down upon by unimaginative haters..
we have clannad for example....

 

Well, this is a modern day's people problem with its high medical knowledge.

"Nah, just a common cold" and three days later found dead from organ necrosis.

Fever is a sign that an abnormality is happening inside our body. You can get a fever from a normal influenza or dangerous parasitic organism attack, who knows which one.

The problem is, even if there is death from a disease that shown a fever symptoms, people say the disease name rather than "death from fever"


Also, fever in a story mostly happen suddenly and the source is unknown.
Adding to that, many MC usually live alone without proper caretaker to nurse the weak body.

 

Nah, Is not that fast. At least four days.

 

It's kinda funny, here fever starts at 39°C (sill ends after 41-42°).

Btw. in my country there is something called the "male cold", a very dangerous and highly contagious disease which weakens even the strongest man towards a child that even giggly bully schoolgirls feel pity for. To be exact patients of said disease may even start planning their own funeral.

I guess it's because of the lowered testosterone while being sick, so not only do males feel sick, but they even lose some "strenght".

 

There are several diseases endemic in asia that have high mortality associated with fevers.

Malaria, dengue fever, typhoid fever... the list is actually very long.

Many of these diseases are not an issue in Western countries.

 

you underestimate the power of pain. most deadly things are painful.
yes, fever can easily be ignored but pain is not. especially when accompanied by fever.
that's when they call for help or go to hospital.
pain triggers survival instinct , I mean panic, yes that's the word lol
unless the person himself wants to die himself.
-dammit me, sleep talking again

 

Polio, too. Everyone gets vaccinated against it now but back in the day...

 

where i do agree that today's fever in asian novels already became a trope, so this is the reason why they are deadly in novels today.
i must say that until last year i never had any super kill fever full bed time fever in my entire 27 years of life; i got very bad ones even reaching 39-40°C or more and i could still more or less function; eat-drink-walk; of course when i got the 40+ ones i was not running a marathon in my daily life sometimes i even had hallucinations caused by fever that i had a alligator eating me, and not in the sexual way

Spoiler: alligator

the entire alligator concept nightmare comes than when i was a child-6-8 years my family brought a house and when we went there to see there was a huge alligator there 2-3x maybe even bigger than me at the time( i was a child, so you understand), and it really gave a impact to me when my father and some friends tried to fend him off and chase him way from the house so alligators always had been my nightmare monster until today when i get nightmares sometimes i still see one eating me.

. but still you get the gist of it; i was functional but on this year i got two times a fever/cold that it really "killed" me, i could not function with it anymore, even walking-eating was hard, i never had those ones before and they are not even at 39-40°C like some ones i got in the past and again in 1-2 days i was back on the horse and functional, i was not cured of course but i could function again the same as the previous time.
so in the end i would like to believe that there could be different types of colds disease today, even without searching the google for those types, i believe some may really get you hard and the oriental folks simple get those ones all the times, where us as the west does not.

 

True, there are colds and "colds". When I was about 10 I too had a cold that sapped every bit of strength I had, my entire body and head ached so much, plus the fever, I felt my body burn(although it was ice cold) and my head felt so faint. I remember that I slept two days straight, only waking up a few times to drink water and when my mother woke me up for food and/or medicine.

 

Well there are kinds of fever along with their severity.

The ones they mention in the novel are the near death one. You wouldn't want it, is what I can tell you.

 

There was some guy who made fun of that then when he visited Japan and caught a cold he ended up bedridden for a few days. That's internet here say.

Ten years ago I visited Taiwan, caught a cold, untreated (my body will fight it off), one and a half day later and I could barely walk, sniffling and tearing and headaches. Pills, a night of rest and taking it easy until afternoon and I was fine.