Has there ever been an illness like this before?

[NastyOldBag]

As in one that almost exclusively affects adults, particularly the elderly? Almost all other illnesses I can think of affect the young as well as the old as they are both vulnerable. Does anyone know why it doesn’t affect children so much?

Not that I want it to affect children, of course. Dh (who genuinely is normally very level headed and not into conspiracies) thinks it was invented by the Chinese in order to reduce the population. I don’t understand it at all.

Whoops I didn't read the op properly, sorry everyone l!

Spanish flu apparently struck the young adults and middle age heavily. If you read up on it, this is put down to the fact it ran rampant through soldiers in army barracks, sailors and those in cramped worked places.... Badly ventilated areas.

@GirlCalledJames if you was to stop smoking would the ACE2 receptor repair and put you as lower risk?

There’s a theory Spanish Flu killed the young more because their immune systems over reacted. So stronger immune systems meant a higher risk. In addition many were given aspirin in high doses which is believed to have killed many. The latter may have been military as normal people had little access to health care.

Stats have just been released that Covid is exponentially more serious for those who are obese or morbidly obese, as well as the very old. Children and young people don't generally fall into the obese category and obviously aren't elderly. Historically obesity and/or very large populations of very elderly weren't around in large numbers, so I am not sure we can make any judgements about which pandemics affected whom, as the populations are so very different.

Yes, two years ago 250,000 people died in the UK from flu, many had had the vaccination. Lord knows how many cases there would have been without this.
Yet most of us are unaware, it wasn't published, no social distancing, lockdown, or checking up on our whereabouts.
Strange, that.

I was also inclining to the thought areas of your DH but there are a couple of pieces out there that reassure me a bit. There is a coronavirus 'page' of data on Information Is Beautiful if you google it and it shows C-19 on a scatter graph of the world's most other deadly viruses. A number of them that overtake it in deadly effect and ability to spread are definitely indiscriminating in terms of age, and also are things that will disproportionately affect countries without good sanitation, water supply, etc. so they are perhaps the things that the UK/Europe/USA would class as less of a problem.
I also read somewhere that if someone's system has fought off different respiratory illnesses over more years in their life, that could be a factor that puts older people at more risk with this one - essentially the 'experience' the system has had would influence how it attempts to approach the new one whereas children's systems have not necessarily fought off as many different things.
Lastly there is a National Geographic article that says that from what they can observe of the virus at the moment, it does seem to have characteristics that suggest it has 'brewed' in an organism, possibly pangolin or bat apparently.

@Devlesko do you have a source for the 250k flu deaths two years ago? I can find a high of 28330 in 2014/15 but low of 1692 in 18/19.

Sweating sickness

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweating_sickness

Chicken pox springs to mind. Usually harmless in children. Life threatening in adults.

@Devlesko
Was that 2017-2018? I had flu then, it wiped me out, had it in the November and was still feeling rough by the end of Jan. I went to the Drs and she told me that worldwide it’s had been an awful winter for illness.

@ShastaBeast
2014-2015 apparently they got the strain of flu wrong for the vaccine that’s why lots of people caught it.

Chicken pox is nearly always mild in children and is worse the older you get

Devlesko that's the figure for the whole world. Youtube video right?

I thought Sweating Sickness was fairly indiscriminate. I’m basing that statement solely on Wolf Hall though

I don't think so op, this illness seems very unusual in the range of symptoms experienced. People are taking 'mild' symptoms to mean flu-like, but I think actually for many it is much more mild than flu. Boris would not be conducting meetings etc in his suit if he had anything like flu symptoms. I think I had it 2 weeks ago and it was more similar in severity to a cold rather than flu (though the actual symptoms were not those of a cold). Prince Charles has also recovered far too quickly for it to have been anything like flu.

I really think the complications are as a result of other factors eg lung damage, and many people probably don't have any symptoms at all hence the rapid spread.

The Plague
Black Death
Ebola
Spanish Flu
Sars
AIDS

Some light reading on the Black Death:

'Despite the limitations of the available data, Russell concluded that age did have an effect on Black Death mortality; he argued that older men were particularly susceptible (although individuals over the age of 60 apparently fared better than those in their late 50s), and children between the ages of ten and fifteen were at a lower risk of dying from the disease than other age groups.'

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094018/

If this virus isn't affecting kids, it's worrying that today it was announced on the news that a 12 year old has died. They said it's the youngest death..so how many other young people have died they're not publicising? Also a 19 year old has died and he had no underlying health conditions.

@Deelish75 but 250k deaths in the UK is huge even if no one was vaccinated. But the 14/15 is pretty big so must have been bad.

I saw 290-650k as being world wide figures so 250k is likely to be worldwide, not UK. But 250k deaths would be possible for Covid19, maybe even double, so shows just how bad it could be if we didn’t take measures to slow/stop it.

All viruses effect everyone. Usually the young, old and others with underlying conditions suffer more because of poor immunity and underlying conditions that complicate the bodies resistance.

Spanish flu appeared in 1918 to effect more young, otherwise healthy people rather than older more at risk groups because there were flu pandemics in the late 1880s-1890s so the people exposed to those viruses that didn't die at that time had developed immunity.

There is no mechanism in a virus to target to specific age groups. Its a virus.

You do know how silly you're being in asking this don't you?

Elderly is relative. Not too long ago you were old, if you were lucky enough to live past 60

@NastyOldBag

Dh (who genuinely is normally very level headed and not into conspiracies) thinks it was invented by the Chinese in order to reduce the population.

to reduce everyone's population, or just their domestic population?

If it was just the domestic population, surely they could just adjust their tax system to penalise large families and the birth rate will fall naturally? (thinking of some western countries where the birthrate is low, so population will fall.)

And, if it was to reduce the world population in general, why is the virus deadly to 80 year olds (who would die soon anyway) and not so deadly to adults and children?

If they wanted to reduce the population only of other countries, why start it in Wuhan, and also why have it attach to the ACE-2 receptors which are more common in chinese people?

Its all directly or indirectly related to older people having crapper immune systems in general - like everything, your body gets worse at it as you get older (eyesight, fitness etc etc) and you have probably done more damage to it (smoking, pollution, other illnesses) plus you are more likely to be on medication for other illnesses (diabetes, hypertension) which are thought to make it easier for the virus t infect and overwhelm your immune system (cause more expression of ACE2 receptors, the gateways this virus uses to enter the cells) plus your body is more likely to be generally weaker due to hear disease, cancer etc

@ShastaBeast

I have no idea what the actual death rate was I just remember the Dr telling me that worldwide it had been really bad for winter illnesses in Jan 2018. I think the 250k has to be worldwide otherwise it would have been all over the U.K. press.