Look back at the chronicle of global pandemics, and the flu pandemic of 1918 stands out as an anomaly for one reason: According to the history books, it struck healthy adults in their prime just as often, if not more so, than the weak or sickly.
This assumption has influenced research and literature for decades.
But new research published Oct. 9 in the journal PNAS suggests it may not be true at all.
In examining the skeletal remains of nearly 400 individuals, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and McMaster University found that in 1918—just like in 2020—people exposed to environmental, social or nutritional stressors before-hand were significantly more likely to succumb to a novel virus when it emerged.
Just adding my two cents here, but this might be an example of survivorship bias - if enough of the weak, elderly, frail, already sick etc. people died before they could be taken to a hospital (or their relatives couldn’t afford treatment and didn’t even attempt to call a doctor) then the hospitals would have been full of people “in their prime” instead, skewing the statistics accordingly. It would not necessarily be that “the young were remembered better” but instead that only/mostly the young and healthy patients made it to the doctors in the first place.
I’d say some of that and some of it being that we didn’t know to label some of these preexisting problems or environmental stressors as being a differentiating factor.
Not surprising. This was the time before antibiotics, medical treatments were often lacking in any sort of evidence, and there were no widespread vaccines. Chronic conditions in the young were far more common than today - think latent tuberculosis, after effects of polio, rheumatic heart disease, parasites, chronic environmental lung diseases (silicosis, coal miners lung, etc.). Even basic nutrition wasn’t sufficient in many areas of society.
