Michelle,
This is precisely what you will experience under socialized medicine. If you ask me, too many fools are going to the hospital for cold and flu bs that it clogs the industry with non essential and non triage or life threatening attention whores. The fact is that if you can breath and eat you will probably be fine. Now, if you start bleeding out your bum and or are vomiting like the Zombies on 28 days later... Get to the bloody hospital and do it with a quarantine suit. The rest can sit and twiddle their thumbs.