Thread by @arapaho415

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 1/ First American generation patriarch:
"[O]n May 29, 1918, while walking with his son Fred, Trump [age 49] suddenly felt extremely sick and was rushed to bed. The next day, he was dead. What was first diagnosed as pneumonia... (con't)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick…

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 2/ ...turned out to be one of the early cases of the Spanish flu..."
⤵️"[T]he [mortality] peak [of the Spanish flu] may plausibly be explained as a consequence of immunity from earlier influenza epidemics. (con't)

https://twitter.com/ThomasS4217/status/1257261584919023618

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 3/ ...The last one of these immunizing epidemics must then be postulated to have occurred about 30 years before 1918, which could have been just before the start of the ‘Russian🇷🇺 flu’ pandemic that appears to have started in 1889. (con't)
Jul 11, 2009:
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 4/ ...In order to explain the strength of protective immunity among higher age groups during the Spanish flu pandemic and the flat minimum on the curve for age-specific mortality somewhere between 50 and 60 years, we need to postulate that H1 (most likely H1N1) virus strains...

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 5/ ...must have been circulating in human populations during the 1880s and earlier, at least back to the 1860s. To explain the lack of protective immunity among people younger than about 28–30 years, we need also to postulate that these influenza virus strains... (con't)

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 6/ ... were wiped out following the Russian flu pandemic, similarly to the disappearance of H1N1 viruses in human populations after the Asian flu pandemic in 1957 and H2N2 viruses in human populations after the Hong Kong flu pandemic in 1968." (more...)

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 7/ "We now know that the flu virus is a parasite that needs the host cell of another living organism in order to reproduce. In human hosts the desired cells are those lining the lung. (con't)
Jul 22, 2017:
theguardian.com/books/2017/jul…

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 8/ ...Once reproduction is complete, the replicated virus must leave the host, be carried in the air, and infect another, if it is to thrive. Flu’s symptoms represent the body’s immune response to the viral invasion. (con't)

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 9/ ...Antibodies are triggered and immune cells rush to the site of infection, 👉releasing viral-killing cytokine chemicals👈; a consequent local inflammation is perhaps a small price to be paid by the host. But the flu virus also shows a propensity to mutate... (con't)

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 10/ ...and generate variants; hence the need to manufacture new vaccines each year for seasonal outbreaks. In the case of the variant that came to be called the Spanish flu, the viral infection triggered a 👉cytokine storm👈 in some victims, a massive inflammatory response...

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 11/ ...throughout the lungs that was hugely damaging to the host."
"There had been pandemics before, notably the Russian🇷🇺 flu of the 1890s, which killed a million people, but nothing on this extraordinary scale."
The Spanish flu targeted people in the prime of life. (more)

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 12/ "A high-security containment facility in Atlanta, Georgia, keeps under lock and key an organism that in the course of a few months from 1918-1919 was responsible for more deaths than the number of people killed in the first world war. Vanished until 2005... (con't)

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 13/ ...the H1N1 strain of the influenza virus was 👉brought back to life👈 for the purpose of better understanding its catastrophic effect on the world’s population a century ago. But as Laura Spinney points out in Pale Rider... (con't)

@Otto_English @MsMariaT 14/ ...the resurrection is not thought universally to be a good idea."
"The title of Pale Rider is taken from Revelation and the apocalyptic “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”, an African-American spiritual in which the rider’s name is Death." /end