Gastrointestinal bacteria, usually.

No, it was correct the first time. Most gastroenteritis (at least here in the states) is caused by various and sundry viruses.

Bacterial gastroenteritis is less common, but damned unpleasant.

It’s worth pointing out that the word “flu” is actually very old, and has referred to various types of ailment (including the stomach flu) since long before the influenza virus was discovered. Indeed, since before bacteria were discovered. It’s an odd quirk of linguistics that the term “flu” has been restricted in this way; other ancient names for broad groups of diseases were either abandoned entirely (how many times have you heard of people stricken by ague?) or retained but given qualifiers. In the case of the flu, one could argue that it was both restricted and given a qualifier!

“The flu” is really a contraction of “the influence”, which Latin-speaking doctors called “influenza”. The term was applied to a host of easily contagious diseases with some vaguely similar symptoms, the idea being that some sort of invisible influence must be passing between the patients. Which was true, as it happens. Today, we know that there are a lot of different “influences” that can sicken people — influenza, various rhinoviruses, rotavirus, norovirus, scads of different bacteria, even some parasites that might elicit a flu-like response. But only a few of them get called “flu”. For upper respiratory tract infections, the term is generally restricted to infections caused by the influenza virus (so for URI infections, the term’s scope has contracted), whereas for stomach infections, the term remains a broad, nonspecific one to describe symptoms and not an actual pathogen (so for GI infections, the term’s scope is just as broad as it always was).

So the weird thing is, it’s not that people have gotten sloppy and started to call stomach flu the stomach flu. That’s actually the older usage. They’ve just failed to restrict the usage the way that some biologists and epidemiologists might like. In the end, language does not bend so easily to logic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray

GAry 7

Yeah, I head a similar reaction watching the interview. It struck me that Levay was uneducated on the realities of the LHC, and simply parrotted the ridiculous pseudoscience that’s cropped up in the mainstream media lately. In the end, I found the whole interview pretty frustrating, particularly since Stewart is admittedly ignorant on scientific topics, and so is reliant on the interviewees to, you know, know what they’re talking about.

Both the Rotovirus and the Norovirus will cause both vomiting and diarrhea. In addition you can also have mild flu-like aches.

Note a further instance of “Bad Biology.” Some people refer to any gastrointestinal distress as the flu. Obviously it’s not, as anyone who’s had the flu will attest.