Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Serious? One death is serious, but preventive medicine people deal in YPPL, that is Years of Potential Life Lost. A human is a human but the death of a 90 year old with COPD needing three nebulizer treatments a day so he can go on living on supplemental oxygen tethered by a tube to his oxygen concentrator strikes me as a little LESS serious than the death of a 14 year old. This disease seems to SPARE kids, absent end stage cystic fibrosis, immune deficiency, cancer, or some other life threatening preexisting condition. The terrible thing about the Spanish flu was that unlike most flu strains that tended to take out the very old and very young, that variant seemed to take out young adults of childbearing/rearing age, leaving a lot of orphans.
It’s difficult to deny that this illness is going to play havoc with the elderly with preexisting conditions, but apocalypse it isn’t.
The Spanish Flu came in two waves. The first in early 1918 was fairly mild. Mostly killing the elderly and sick. Then it went quiet for a few months. The second wave in the Fall was the one that was vicious, as you describe.