Prepare to be astonished!
“That has implications for new pandemic viruses,”
So,,, if you are one of the few who live through the next pandemic, you won’t ever catch it again.
I have never had the flu either and I am in my mid-50s. I have always wondered if it had anything to do with my great-grandmother who got the flu while breastfeeding my grandfather. She died shortly afterwards but of pneumonia, not the flu. I can’t recall my mother having the flu, and I don’t know if my grandfather ever had it. Perhaps some of the survivors descendants also carry some immunity?
Interesting. MOther was born in 1918
BTTT !
I just realized it was probably the flu epidemic.
Reason I'm asking is that I once read that the US Civil War was the first major conflict in which losses to direct combat were larger than so-called “camp deaths”. I'm wondering if that statement can be true, or whether it holds for WW1.
“
Survivors of 1918 Flu Pandemic Immune 90 Years Later
“
Funny (ironic funny) that this reminds me of my father’s beloved
Aunt Olive.
As a child, I recall her memory of “The Spanish Influenza”.
She talked about the amazing number of people that “when they woke
up...they was dead!”.
Even these three and more decades later, I marvel at how an humble old
“flyover-country” lady told me almost as much about the global pandemic
now known as “The Spanish Influenza” as I learned in an excellent
(even if it’s from PBS!!!) documentary; the webpage for the doc is
linked below)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_killerflu/index.html
PS: As much as it pains me...”Secrets of The Dead” is one of the
few jewels of PBS...it’s just about as much of a truth-telling and
politically-incorrect series as PBS has ever produced.
OK, IMHO!!!
PPS and additional irony:
The narrator of “Secrets of The Dead” (Liev Schreiber, sp?) filled
in for for top dog “Grissom” for a couple of episodes of “CSI”.
My grandfather passed away in the Pendemic of ‘18. My dad is 89 years old.
My maternal grandmother was born in 1901. She had the flu so bad, she was given last rites, but she pulled through and lived to be 93. Two of her sisters are still alive; one is 96 and another is 93. A third died last week at 98. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.
Natural selection (NOT “evolution”) at work here folks.
I wonder if that immunity can be passed on from parents who were adults in 1918, I’m 71 and have never had the flu.
Once your body learns how to develop an antibody, It remembers it forever.
I am immune to Scorpion stings.
I read in a book on the Middle Ages that there is documentary evidence that certain communities or areas, notably one in middle Europe (Austria/Serbia?) and a couple in England, were spared the ravages of the Black Death although towns all around them were susceptible.
Presumably these interbred communities had developed some sort of antibody that protected them.
Seems to me, that if you can survive to the 90’s, or to 100, then you have a pretty strong immune system, anyway. Those who had stopped producing antibodies probably lost the ability to protect themselves from other diseases as well, and aren’t here to test.