Study: Spanish Flu & Covid Dead Died?

New study seems to contradict a long-standing belief that young, healthy adults were most at risk during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, in which 50M died world-wide; instead, we’re now told “frail or unhealthy people” were more vulnerable. Huh?

Won’t get into the details of the research outlined in the Fox News story, tho it came down to examining the bones of flu victims & seeing whether they showed evidence of trauma, infection, or malnutrition. What’s surprising today is that anyone would have thought the healthy adults were most likely to die in 1918. But, conventional wisdom since did, based largely on anecdotal reports compiled from around the globe at the time, as a basic Google search will attest. Lead study author Amanda Wissler at Canada’s McMaster University, however, is one who expected the latest “frailty is at fault” conclusions & explained: “Even in a novel pandemic – to which no one is supposed to have prior immunity – certain people are at a greater risk of getting sick & dying & this is often shaped by culture” as well as social & biology.

Exactly. The link between poverty, poor health care & susceptibility to disease (as well as biology or genetics) was a long-established fact by the time I was a 1970s collegiate. So, no surprise either that the CDC agrees with this latest study’s common sense “cultural” & “social” impact interpretation. Maybe 105-years after the 1918 debacle, it’s also worth finally pointing out the most obvious of all: That the flu itself doesn’t now play, and never has played favorites. That’s why CDC still warns that those most likely to be most at risk from today’s COVID includes ANYONE who is frail. That means the elderly, as well as those with serious underlying medical conditions like diabetes, cancer, kidney or liver disease, chronic respiratory illnesses & so on. Certainly, the news & gov’t stats suggested the wealthy & privileged in those at risk groups were also dying in droves from COVID & winding up as dead as anyone else.

Davd Soul