Hello @dougschiffman, It's never fun having a flare up with your PMR. You will notice that we merged your discussion with an existing discussion on the same topic so that you meet other members like @christopherc, @priscillat, @aspine and others with PMR who have experienced with flair ups from a virus or flu. If you click the link below it will take you to the beginning of the discussion.
--- PMR Flair up From a Virus?: https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/flair-up-from-a-virus/.

Have you tried slightly upping the dose of prednisone to see if that helps?

Your 7 mg dose does make a difference when you get an infection and are sick. You are at the stage where you are potentially at risk of adrenal insufficiency. "Sick day rules" are more for people diagnosed with adrenal insufficiency. People with PMR who are on long term prednisone are at risk of adrenal sufficiency but that doesn't mean everyone with PMR should be following sick day rules.
https://www.endocrinology.org/media/4169/ai-and-exogenous-steroids_patient-information-sheet.pdf
Please don't increase your dose based solely on these "sick day rules." Without knowing your entire medical history, nobody should be advising you to follow sick day rules. Please discuss this with your doctor.

When a person is sick, the body needs more cortisol. More prednisone might be helpful but informing your doctor is extremely important.

This appeared to happen with my dad. He had an unspecified respiratory infection that required antibiotics and now it’s 5 weeks later, and his rheumatologist suspects a PMR flare. He was currently at 5 mg prednisone, and she increased him to 6 mg.

It doesn’t seem too out of the ordinary for this to happen because viral infections are known to trigger immune or autoimmune conditions, even if we don’t quite know how or why this happens?