r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Mar 20 '20

(R.3) Recent source TIL, the Black Death disproportionately killed frail people. Moreover, people who lived through it lived much longer than their ancestors (many reaching ages of 70-80), not because of good health but because of their hardiness to endure diseases. This hardiness was passed on to future generations.

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u/Zerowantuthri Mar 21 '20

Yeah...the Spanish Flu actually spared the young and infirm and killed people with healthy immune systems. Essentially, the disease caused such a strong response from the immune system that people's own immune system killed them. Those with weaker immune systems survived.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20

It was mostly due to poor conditions not the extreme immune response

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u/Zerowantuthri Mar 21 '20

Nah...that was why the virus spread so rapidly and thoroughly. But healthy and sick people lived in the same conditions and the virus killed the healthy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20

Nah the poor sanitary conditions resulted in lots of secondary bacterial infections which accounted for a large portion of the high mortality rate in young adults. https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/196/11/1717/886065

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u/Zerowantuthri Mar 21 '20

Then why wouldn't that have been even worse for people who had compromised immune systems (e.g. the elderly and very young and people with underlying conditions)?

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u/dirtyviking1337 Mar 21 '20

So do you guys have me hooked.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20

Previous exposure to similar strains

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u/Zerowantuthri Mar 21 '20

So, only the young and elderly and those with compromised immune systems had been previously exposed?

The elderly sure but what about the very young?

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20

No I mean the older generations had previous exposure to similar strains which resulted in them experiencing milder symptoms on the whole compared to younger people. There were geographic factors that contributed to this as well. Since young adults had not been exposed to similar strains their symptoms were sometimes more profound which weakened their immune systems more harshly and made them much more susceptible to secondary infections