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So, is what you have the flu or just a head-cold? The go-to-bed flu or call-911-flu? How do you know, short of a trip to the doctor’s office?

Like increasing numbers of questions, those can be partially answered on the internet.

Let’s start by saying nothing can replace eye-to-eye contact with a medical professional and the experienced advice he or she gives that is specific to you and your case. But these days, trips to the doctor or emergency room carry hazards of their own.

Paraphrasing the late football coach, Woody Hayes, Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says three things can happen in a waiting room, and two of them are bad.

“If you are sick and go to the emergency room, you can infect everybody there. If you are not sick but someone else is, you can leave with a disease you didn’t come in with.”

The only good thing, Frieden said, would be if you had an illness that required medical attention, and you got it. But wouldn’t it be better to know before you go?

Here are five online screening tests you can take from home, school or office — even from the library — to check your illness before exposing yourself to others’ disease, or vice-versa. All five have limitations, but all are a good guide to what you may have and how serious it is.

The American Medical Association interactive site at https://www.amafluhelp.org/Public/Consumer/Home.aspx offers two assessments, one for a child patient and one for an adult, because signs, symptoms and hazards aren’t always the same. While it’s all free, registration is required.

AMA also wants you to join its HealthVault program to store medical information in a password protected account, including not only the results of the online flu test but medical history and meds you’re taking now. You can take an adult version of the flu test without opening a HealthVault file, but the child’s version requires it. If secrecy is an issue with you, you can use any name you wish.

The anonymous self-test starts by telling you to talk to a doctor if you are pregnant, or have one of several non-flu medical conditions. As you answer more questions, your answer may again trigger the advice to see a doctor, or the test may tell you you may have the flu but probably don’t need medical attention, then give some generic advice on home treatment.

A short, adult-only screening test is offered by the US Department of Health and Human Services at http://www.flu.gov/evaluation/index2.html?i_agree=i+agree#. It is also free, but doesn’t ask you to register nor to participate in the medical-data storage program.

The HHS test goes straight to the key question, whether you have fever and a cough or sore throat. If yes, it assumes you have flu and begins measuring the severity of your case. In the end, it says people who answer the way you did probably do or don’t have the flu. If yes, it recommends you see a doctor and gives common home-treatment advice.

Dr Frieden’s agency, the Centers for Disease Control, offers two online tests, one for children and one for adults, at http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/clinicians/patient_management/, labeled “Triage algorithm”.

The name suggests they are intended for medical professionals, not patients, and that’s true. “Triage” is the process screening incoming patients to decide who needs the most immediate care. An “algorithm” is a series of questions, like a decision tree, where each answer leads to another question, until there’s enough information for an answer. Because it’s intended for a medical pro, the language is sometimes technical and information required may not be obvious, but a moderately knowledgeable person should be able to work through to an answer.

As with the other tests, the answer is likely to be yes, you appear to have the flu, or no, you don’t, and if yes, whether you ought to seek immediate medical care.

None of the three sponsors of the tests pretends to replace a visit to the doctor, but for most patients, they can give you a good idea what the doctor is likely to tell you. Then you can decide whether it’s worth exposing yourself to whatever’s floating around the waiting room.

The digitally-challenged can go to a website at http://home.ktc.com/kdumc/DisasterPlan/flunew.htm, where the “Home Care” category offers help deciding whether what you have is cold or flu, what to do about it, and what signs justify a call to the doctor...or 911.