4 ms·
>Factor in a glut of people who're living into advanced age, due to the progress of medical technology, so naturally in a precarious place against any infection
by belltaco 6y ago
>Factor in a glut of people who're living into advanced age, due to the progress of medical technology, so naturally in a precarious place against any infection
Then why does the annual flu not wipe out this population? Immunity lasts about 3 years so every such person who is exposed to the flu should be dying in one 3 year cycle.
- gligorot 6y agoWouldn't annual re-exposure to a similar virus "renew" the immunity?
- aaronblohowiak 6y agoFlu vaccination is pretty prevalent among seniors.
- ineedasername 6y agoWhich reinforces the need to have vaccines to get to herd immunity, not just herd immunity except for seniors who will die a lot.
- treis 6y agoImmunity lasts longer than 3 years: >According to our study, it appears they can last the entire lifespan of the human organism — 90 years plus. >n our study we were looking for antibodies to the 1918 flu. This flu virus was reconstructed a number of years ago in the lab, so we were able to test to see if 90 years later we could still find antibodies. I recruited survivors, people who were born in 1915 or earlier and thus presumably survived the 1918 flu. We found that virtually all the people born in 1915 or earlier — about 90% of them — had good "titers" to the 1918 flu, which means they still had reasonably high concentrations of the antibodies in their blood, whereas among controls, people who were born in 1926 or later, it was only about 10%. That was really quite a remarkable finding. http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1835907,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1835907,0...
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoIt does, in recent years, the flu death tolls have been below average mortality - Levitt's been looking at EuroMOMO for this.