[conspire] (forw) [offlist] Pandemic stats (was: dvlug.org reboot)

[Nick Moffitt]

On 15Nov2021 01:12pm (-0800), Rick Moen wrote:
> The leading theory about cessation of Spanish flu is the obvious one, that it
> burned out because it had already killed the vulnerable and that enough of
> the surviving popultion had disease-conferred immunity, thus lowering R-eff
> way below 1.0.  But nobody is certain.

There is another angle on this story, which is the way that the 1918 flu seemed to be comparatively benign to populations over 40.  There's a lot to be said about the way WW1 concentrated transmission vectors among soldiers and field hospitals, but even well into 1919 the primary losses were among the young.

The mostly-uncontested conjecture is that older generations must have encountered more benign H1N1 strains that were close enough to grant immunity to this one, some time in the 19th century.  Their immune systems had memory of the requisite antibodies to produce and surfaces to detect, and were able to become effective against it more quickly.

After all, milkmaids don't seem to get smallpox...