Yes, I have read that the 1919 flu virus killed a lot of young, healthy men, whilst spareing the old and infirm. Not far from here is an old (now closed) army post (Ft. Devens). On the grounds is an enormous cemetary, holding thousands of graves-vctims of the flu. The hasty mobilization of millions of soldiers, packing them into jerry-built barracks at places like Ft. Devens, gave the virus an excellent opportunity to spread like wildfire. In addtion, the food service that the Army provided was extremely unsanitary (by today’s standards). It was common to just rinse plates and cups after feeding a group of men-and the next buch of soldiers would eat off these same (unsterilized) plates.
One other thing was noted by doctors of the time…men who had worked under extremely filthy conditions (sewer workers, slaughterhouse workers) rarely got the flu, which supports the notion that partial immunity was conferred by exposure to other porcine or avian viruses.
You mean the Gladwell article? I think he gets into that later: mostly about how the troop movements helped things along.
Gladwell has a lot of fascinating stuff. If you liked this, go ahead and dig through the rest of his archives on that site.
a lot of the responces to my last post are to the effect of: The ones who died had less exposure to bugs (read: insufficient immune system) or TOO MUCH responce from Immune system. So therefore, young healthy peeps died more.
There may be some creadence to those lines of thought… but so far, none of the provided articles have eluded to these hypothesis… and both seem to ignore that the elderly and infirm seemed ‘immune’ (in the greater numbers anyway) to the virus. While you could argue the ‘over responce’ of the immune system… that (to me anyway) seems illogical. The flu virus doesn’t work like that. (or at least, i’ve never heard of it working like that). I would be interested in reading any cites that support either of these views.
I’m also curious if anyone has looked into the possiblity that the Flu of 1918 had occured before. Because if it has… it’s been 85 years and that seems to be the cycle, making us overdue for Round 3. :eek:
Gina Kolata’s book “Flu” describes several attempts to retrieve virus from frozen or otherwise preserved tissue. Accidentally starting another pandemic was considered possible at the time, but not probable if the experimenters used ordinary precautions (masks, gloves, etc.) Deliberate propagation of the virus wasn’t discussed, however.
The over-response of the immune system is in The Great Influenza - which I got from the library and can’t give you a specific cite. If I remember correctly, the author implied that the over-response was obvious and known - it is what made the symptoms so bad - but the reason it was triggered to such an almost suicidal degree was (and is) unknown. If you are looking for a good book about the flu, I would recommend it - it includes a history of how backward medicine in the US was up to about 1900, and a great overview of the disease itself, the theories the scientists were pursuing, and how it spread around the world. Some of the descritpions of the doctors and scientists were a little bit dry, but Barry does a great job of explaining how they fit into the overall story.
I just got the Barry book from the library. It looks wonderful; I’m going to read the whole thing.
Another contributing factor to the range of immune responses is believed to be individual histories. The 1895 flu had some surface features in common with 1918, so people who recovered from that bug had antibodies that helped somewhat in limiting 1918’s virulence in their bodies. That could be part of the reason middle-aged folks did better than those too young to have experienced 1918.
Precisely what I was looking for… cite? or is it from The Great Flu book? Though, 1895 to 1918 is only 23 years in difference… seems like there’d be a larger pool of “immunes” than just 70 - 74 year olds. Unless the previous cite for the 70 -74’s was an over simplification of the survivors.
Sorry to keep disappearing here. I’m in the middle of moving and both home and work are pretty scattered.
I don’t know if this is graphed out in the book, but mortality rates in patients over 30 were lower than those in the teens and twenties. It wasn’t until 60+ that death rates spiked up again.