Hacker News Reader

Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

While doing ancestry research years ago, I learned I had a 2nd great uncle who immigrated to America from Romania aboard the RMS Carpathia in 1904. (Eight years later in 1912, this would be the first ship to come to the Titanic’s rescue, and six years after that would itself be sunk by a U-Boat.) He had left Romania likely to escape anti-semitism. He’d eventually find his way out to Denver. Sadly, he’d die in 1918 (the same year the Carpathia was sunk) at the age of 25, very probably from the flu.

This is a picture of him, along with his headstone and declaration of intent to become a citizen:

- https://ibb.co/xggjjnJ (Photo)

- https://ibb.co/vvnSqMg (Headstone)

- https://ibb.co/zmNzdC9 (Declaration)

Google Maps for his Denver, CO address:

- https://goo.gl/maps/CvmeCsUARnwXNnBu6

View on HN

It's worth noting that the 1918 flu was unique in that it killed many young, healthy people.

Corona virus is more typical in that it's primarily killing the very old or otherwise ill.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

How much of that was down to the disease, compared to the conditions that "young, healthy" people would have been subjected to during a world war?

The belief is that it was disease related. Younger, healthier people have more active immune systems and the Spanish flu was causing it to kick into overdrive (similar to a cytokine storm).

I think the war definitely helped spread it as living conditions were rough and there was plenty of migration.

From the article (as well as other places I've read similar things).

"Why did so many young adults die? As it happens, young adults have the strongest immune systems, which attacked the virus with every weapon possible—including chemicals called cytokines and other microbe-fighting toxins—and the battlefield was the lung. These “cytokine storms” further damaged the patient’s own tissue."

The more robust immune response was a large cause of the increased mortality.

Iirc from my time as a biologist, we don't have any direct evidence that a cytokine storm happened and there seem to be other possible explanations for that distribution.

There were two waves to the Spanish Flu. Wave 1 started like the standard flu - it was mild, hitting mostly the old and ill, and not terribly deadly. Wave 2 is when it mutated, spread like wildfire, and killed 2% of the world population.

From what I can tell they aren't completely sure what happened here. One theory I read is that WW1 reversed the trend of what happens with flu: if you had mild symptoms, you stayed on the front line. If you had severe ones, you got shipped back home on crowded trains and ships. This is in contrast with regular life - if you get a mild flu you still go out, but with severe flu you tend to stay at home.

I don't think Corona virus will turn out this way. But it also doesn't seem exactly correct to say Corona virus isn't like the Spanish flu. There's lots of possible outcomes as it continues to go global. We just don't know.

>> It's worth noting that the 1918 flu was unique in that it killed many young, healthy people.

> There were two waves to the Spanish Flu. Wave 1 started like the standard flu - it was mild, hitting mostly the old and ill, and not terribly deadly. Wave 2 is when it mutated, spread like wildfire, and killed 2% of the world population.

That's sounds similar to the 1977 swine flu. It mainly infected people in their 20s or younger, because it was likely a lab escape of a then-extinct 1950s flu strain. Older people were unaffected because they had already acquired immunity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H1N1...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542197/

Thanks, that's a fascinating story I'd not heard about before.

I don't know, but think it's reasonable to think that part of the reason for the 'W' shaped mortality curves in 1918 was not that the virulence of the 1918 flu was higher for people 20-40, but rather the incidence of infection was just much higher for all those soldiers running around in transport ships etc in Europe.

Another example where we draw inferences on something phenomena, without taking into account the broader context (in this case incidence rate)

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-0979-f2

Nonetheless, the 34-year old doctor who first sounded the alarm about Covid 19 died from it--barely a month after contracting it.

It's hard to know whether the elderly and the ill are simply the first wave of casualties or not.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/whistleblower-...

I would expect greater morbidity and mortality among health care workers, though, so I don't think that's a data point that proves or disproves anything.

Why?

I'd figure they would get exposed more quickly, but the outcome would be, on average, the same as anyone else. Perhaps the stress of working during a health crisis exacerbates the disease, or perhaps they have a more active immune system from constant exposure to new pathogens?

The expert on NYT's The Daily podcast suggested that the load of the infection you are exposed to can influence the severity of the disease, in which case a health worker working with inflicted patients would presumably be at greater risk. However, I have neither the expertise in immunology or the time to look up sources to verify whether his statement is true. (They also suggested that he could just have been unlucky...)

One fascinating thing they mentioned is that a large number of people in China smoke, especially among the elder generation that is experiencing the highest mortality rate. On the podcast, they mentioned that this is essentially a comorbidity, because your lungs are already partially shot by the time you get Covid-19 (and then viral pneumonia).

On the contrary. The age-grouped death rates in your link do not consider the comorbidities.

Indeed, the problem with the coronavirus is that a better immune system can yield an overly intense immune reaction. If this happens, it yields a blockage of the lung capillaries. Hence, it becomes impossible to breathe. This extreme state lasts for about 2 days. This period might be only survived by utilizing a special type of breathing machine.

This over-reaction of the immune system does, however, happen to a lesser amount if the immune system is in a poor condition.

Hence, the coronavirus might, again, yield a survival of the weakest (like in 1918).

Source: an interview with the German virologist Prof. Dr. Dr. Alexander Kekulé, here: https://www.zdf.de/uri/a4719bf9-a2c5-4c66-ad92-105cd8dcfcba (in German)

That's neat (even if it's a sad way to go). This is the kind of thing about the internet that makes all the rest of the noise and nonsense worth it.

Just think, 30 years ago, all of that information would've taken years to put together, if you even could've put it together! Just fascinating.

I'm impressed how far back you've managed to come in your history. An uncle of mine did something similiar some 20 years ago. He managed to get to the point by the end of 1890 where we realized that our grand-grandfather was a Kuckuckskind [1] - and part of our family immigrated to the US.

[1]: A "Kuckuckskind" (German for "cuckoo's child") is a child who's social father is not their biological father. However, this is unkown to both the child and the father, only the mother knows this. I didn't find prove if this is an actual english analogy, so... here you go.

Wouldn't this just be a bastard child?

I don't think so. Isn't a bastard a child born to an unmarried mother?

In the cuckoo's child case, as far society knows the child has two legitimately married parents.

I did most of my research just using ancestry.com. The U.S. censuses and NY state censuses are gold for this kind of thing.

My ancestry is from Romania, Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. I haven't been able to track back into Eastern Europe except for Poland, where a relative hired a professional genealogist who managed to go back to the 1700s. I have no way to verify that information is accurate. On the Romanian branch, I have third cousins who only immigrated to the US as adults and we were able to piece together some bits from photos and postcards that were passed down.

At some point, I'd like to figure out the provenance of my surname (Soffian). Typically names ending in "ian" are Armenian, but I'm fairly confident the Soffian branch of my ancestry is from Ukraine. (Armenia never had much of a Jewish population so it would be unlikely.)

I have a friend who tracked his ancestry into English royalty. He's got a tree with over 10,000 names on it.

Americans have the same thing, the man is who thinks he is the father is called a cuckold. The term is used predominantly by less savory corners of internet who have broadened its use.

I'm kinda fascinated at how you came to this understanding - would seem like if the child didn't know and it otherwise remained a secret, that it would be very difficult to determine in the historical record.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com