Text 21833, 54 rader
Skriven 2006-01-10 18:16:50 av Roy Witt (1:1/22)
  Kommentar till text 21737 av MIKE ROSS (1:167/133.0)
Ärende: Musings online
======================
10 Jan 06 09:19, MIKE ROSS wrote to Roy Witt:

 MR>> I saw a documentary about the Spanish Flu which explained that young
 MR>> adults and children were more severely affected than adults over a
 MR>> certain age. It was theorized that the older people had a partial
 MR>> immunity because they had been stricken by a related virus many
 MR>> years earlier. Young people had no immunity and thus had many more
 MR>> deaths. There was also the matter of throwing thousands of young men
 MR>> in close proximity to one another in camps and in ocean crossing
 MR>> troop ships. Apparently there were more casualties due to the flu
 MR>> than to combat.

 RW>> My MIL was six years old in 1918, and she nursed her adult family
 RW>> during the worst of it. If she died from the Spanish flu, it sure
 RW>> took a long time...she died at 92...

 MR> That sure is a long time indeed and you are lucky to have some good
 MR> longevity genes in your family!

Those won't do me any good...but her kids (my wife) will probably benefit
from them.

 MR> Actually, I made a mistake in retelling the story and should not have
 MR> written "children" but instead "teenagers" and young adults. Turns
 MR> out that young children were not as likely to die because they
 MR> inherited their parents' partial immunity from that previous related
 MR> flu.

Probably true, as babys have a certain immunity to deseases, at least for
a while. And I think that is, if they're breast fed.

 MR> The teenagers and young adults had not inherited those flu antibodies
 MR> like the young children did. Although it seems a contradiction with
 MR> Frank's original story, not all young children survived.

Sorta depended on their status in life. Those who lived in poverty were
more likely to get it than those who lived posh lives.

 MR> I suppose that their parents had not been lucky enough to have been
 MR> exposed to the earlier related flu.

There was sort of another epidemic of the flu in 1968. I got, the wife and
kids didn't. I 'wished' I was dead, but the wife got me out of bed and to
the doc for a shot in the hip...I was out of it for 5 days and didn't
recognize anybody who visited.

 MR> Thanks for catching the miswrite.

Makes for interesting conversation, right?


Roy
--- Twit(t) Filter v2.1 (C) 2000
 * Origin: Hacienda de Rio de Guadalupe * South * Texas, USA * (1:1/22)