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.

@Findumdum1

thank-you for the info :)

it was actually a rhetorical question, i could have typed out a longer version instead, like

"if the motive for creating the virus was to was to reduce the world population in general, then did they design the the virus to be deadly to ..."

instead of

"if it was to reduce the world population in general, why is the virus deadly to ..."

I guess it depends what you mean by "affects". I mean, chicken pox is far more common in children (because most adults already had it) but can be much more serious for adults.

There were NOT 250k flu deaths in the UK recently

There were however about 230k deaths in the UK from Spanish flu in 2018

Uk annual flu deaths have varied from a low of 600 some years ago to a high of under 30,000
Last several years it's averaged about 25k

To the op: I think the 'flu outbreaks of the late 50s and 60s had fatality totals along the lines of what the authorities are predicting for covid19. Probably best to Google for definitive numbers...ok a quick look suggests 33000 deaths in uk. Hong Kong flu.

He can't usually be level headed at all.

It is a VIRUS. A submicroscopic infectious agent.

Either OP is saying that children aren't getting it. Which they are. So then she'd be wrong.

Or she's questioning why children are being infected but seem to have a milder form. A valid discussion which researchers are looking into right now.

But what her OP is suggesting is that a virus would have some form of conciousness when infecting a host to 'sense' this one is young, i'll go easy but i'll kill the elderly and the infirm. As some kind of governmental plot and clearly not knowing what a virus is.

It is a VIRUS.

Which is just embarassing. For her DP and the OP.

Yep 2017/ 2018 figures of deaths for flu, for the UK, source WHO.
It's there in black and white.

Think the Black Death would be up there. 50% mortality rate on British Isles was the estimate.

Sheesh newyearnewjob2013, who pissed on your chips? I didn’t say children aren’t getting it, I asked if there were many other illnesses that affect the elderly without seriously affecting kids. It turns out there are quite a lot, as I said I didn’t know. From my clearly hugely ignorant and embarrassing POV I just thought it interesting that it didn’t really affect children. When I think of a demographic of vulnerable people I generally lump together the very young and the very old and just thought it was interesting.

dpotter the Black Death killed kids as much as adults though didn’t it?

China reduce their population by adjusting tax rates for large families I'm going to assume you know absolutely nothing about China to make a comment like that. They had a one child policy in place for ages. They don't have large families. The population problems there are extremely specific.

They have a population problem though. The one child policy hasn’t got rid of that.

@Tfoot75

I'm going to assume you know absolutely nothing about China to make a comment like that.

i know they had that policy in the past, but i believe it has not been enforced for quite a while, and I don't think they could re-introduce now

It lasted until 2016 and is now a 2 child policy. They don't have a problem with large families, I believe the population problem is one of demographics, ie there are too many old people not working and not enough young workers because of the policy.

A few children have died. It's because they've been exposed to less illness so body has made fewer antibodies so doesn't attack itself as much. Pretty sure the government dont want to kill themselves off! Plus this is shattering everyone financially.

@Tfoot75

thank you for the info. Anyway, my original answer was along the lines of "if the motive (for deliberately inventing this virus) was X, that makes no sense because ..., or if the motive was Y, that makes no sense because ... " , trying to be concise but still write clearly, obviously I still need to do better :)

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.)

Did you completely miss the one child only policy? They actually made it illegal to have more than one child (with a few exemptions), the original children of this policy are now adults and if both are singles then a couple can have 2 children. Obviously with the permission of your employer.

Did you completely miss the one child only policy?

No, i didn't. It is not relevant to the issue of "if they invented the virus for motive X, that makes no sense because ..."

My answer did not touch upon why they might have motive X, it just lists various motives and puts forward a reason why inventing a virus would not be the best way to achieve their aim.

My Granny always use to say she hated the summer, because of polio. Summer was polio season. It tended to effect you worse the older you got it. She said when vaccines for it came out it was literally life changing.

Polio was what I was thinking of reading this thread.
The iron lungs they've only recently stopped making replacement parts for iron lungs

Polio disproportionately affected children didn’t it? My dm has a weak arm as a result of polio as a child and always said that there was an entire wing of the hospital she had to stay in that was just for children with polio.

It is similar in profile to pneumonia - where the weaker / stronger your immune response is the more likely you are to die. Whether you are young or old is irrelevant and we will see this in India where younger people are more likely to have overly ‘strong’ immune responses die to autoimmune conditions

@NastyOldBag it was a “childhood disease” a bit like we consider chickenpox. (So most adults contracted as a child). The mortality rate for adults is much higher then children though. 70 per cent of people who catch it are symptomless. You can transmit for 6 weeks though even with no symptoms.