/I knew being 71 has it’s values:U.S. Says Older People Appear Safer From Virus
See all:Confirming the first impressions of many American and Mexican doctors, federal health officials said on Wednesday that people born before 1957 appear to have some immunity to the swine flu virus now circulating.Tests on blood serum from older people showed that they had antibodies that attacked the new virus, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, chief flu epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a telephone news conference.That does not mean that everyone over 52 is immune, since some Americans and Mexicans older than that have died of the new flu. But it bears out what doctors in the field have noticed: that the new flu infects and hospitalizes many more young people than seasonal flus, which tend to sicken and kill the very old.Only 13 percent of the 247 people hospitalized because of the new flu are over 50 years old, Dr. Jernigan said. Many have other medical conditions like pregnancy, asthma, heart disease, lung disease or obesity. In a typical flu season, more than 90 %[…]