I read that article and another. Both types of flu viruses will take you down by enabling a secondary opportunistic infection, such as pneumonia, to take hold and thereby killing you. Precisely what you see in those Washington nursing home deaths. I go to nursing homes and it is the perfect place for any kind of virus given the close quarters, the understaffed overworked staff who may not always wash hands, and the generally poor health of the residents. The reason Covid-19 is 20 times more lethal at 2% vs 0.1% is that it is new to humans whereas human bodies have seen influenza.
What amazes me is how people have gone nuts about this. Except for the last two years I have never gotten a flue shot and I work in a medical setting. I have never gotten the flu in all the years I have been in that setting. The last time I had the flu was the London flu making it's way through the SDSU dorms in 1973. Lots of hand washing and no shaking hands in the office so I can maintain sterility at all times. I'm not worried about this but several have asked me my thoughts.
Now imagine a real pandemic due to a flu virus. The Spanish flu, created in the WWI trenches in 2018, moved around the world killing 50-100 million people. No public health capabilities at the time and if there were they all would have been overwhelmed in the first two days. That virus was particularly lethal because it induced a very strong immune response leading to a cytokine storm. Your body is flooded by all kinds of chemicals created by your immune system flooding your lungs and killing organs. You could be dead in a matter of hours with no way to stop it then or even today. Who had such immune systems? Why young healthy adults and they were devastated around the world causing long term economic effects since they are working age. You know the virus was recovered from a preserved frozen body in the permafrost of Alaska so it could be broken down in total for the first time genetically.
Now imagine another Spanish flu virus today with air travel instead of trains. Actually you don't want to imagine such another pandemic as the effect could be 250 million deaths. However, the odds are another will happen just like the proverbial 100 year hurricane, earthquake, or tidal wave.
What amazes me is how people have gone nuts about this. Except for the last two years I have never gotten a flue shot and I work in a medical setting. I have never gotten the flu in all the years I have been in that setting. The last time I had the flu was the London flu making it's way through the SDSU dorms in 1973. Lots of hand washing and no shaking hands in the office so I can maintain sterility at all times. I'm not worried about this but several have asked me my thoughts.
Now imagine a real pandemic due to a flu virus. The Spanish flu, created in the WWI trenches in 2018, moved around the world killing 50-100 million people. No public health capabilities at the time and if there were they all would have been overwhelmed in the first two days. That virus was particularly lethal because it induced a very strong immune response leading to a cytokine storm. Your body is flooded by all kinds of chemicals created by your immune system flooding your lungs and killing organs. You could be dead in a matter of hours with no way to stop it then or even today. Who had such immune systems? Why young healthy adults and they were devastated around the world causing long term economic effects since they are working age. You know the virus was recovered from a preserved frozen body in the permafrost of Alaska so it could be broken down in total for the first time genetically.
Now imagine another Spanish flu virus today with air travel instead of trains. Actually you don't want to imagine such another pandemic as the effect could be 250 million deaths. However, the odds are another will happen just like the proverbial 100 year hurricane, earthquake, or tidal wave.
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