H1N1 Advantage to the Advanced

When at last you slide into the ranks of the group called "the elderly," you hope that among all the disadvantages that you incur by doing so, once in a while an actual advantage will  pop up, even though it may dismay those numerous groups who are younger and who seem to believe that elixirs of immortality will be invented and made freely available just in time for them to avoid meeting the same awful fate.   Today just such an advantage was announced by the CDC, and what's more, it's so logical that it's hard to see how it can be shot down any time soon.

     Some Older People May Be Immune to Swine Flu, the headline read, with suitable care and caution, to lessen the chance of resentment on the part of the newer ranks.   But I feel no need to be so circumspect.

It turns out that an earlier version of H1N1 influenza was responsible for the deadly epidemic that broke out just as the First World War was ending, back in 1918, and that strain dominated the flu outbreaks for the next 40 years, till 1957, when another flu family took over.   This means that chances are, those born between those two years, who would now be well up in age, developed a certain amount of immunity that very likely is helping them to fend off the current, related strain.   And the CDC reported that of the cases that have been reported to them so far, only 1 percent involved people 65 and older.   And this when it is the elderly and the very young who are usually the groups that are hit hardest by such illnesses.

Being aged is not the only demographic in which I fall.   There is another that almost always gets the short end of the stick in reports made by the health authorities, and I often wonder if politics and partiality play parts in it all.  Otherwise how is it that the group that is always the first and the longest to be hammered  hard on the American anvil, so that it must have a stronger temper than any others, is so often proclaimed to be the one most susceptible to all kinds of physical shortcomings?