A peculiarity of Spanish flu may shed light on covid-19

IT IS NOWThe EconomistThe Economist Today well established that developing the symptoms of covid-19 when you are old is extremely dangerous, but not so risky when you are young. That might seem unremarkable. Old people are less resilient, and more likely to have specific confounding health problems like diabetes. However, this pattern—that the young live through infection while the old die—is by no means the norm. The influenza outbreak of 1918-19, known (unfairly to Spaniards) as the “Spanish” flu, for example, proved particularly harmful to those aged between 20 and 40, and thus apparently in their prime. Some suspect that fact may cast light on the, albeit different, age-related susceptibility to covid-19.