
Italy: 101-year-old influenza survivor beats Covid-19 - elmar
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/italy-101-year-old-influenza-survivor-beats-covid-19/1783890#
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laxd
Article doesn't mention if he was actually infected by the spanish flu or if
he just survived the times. Anywho, fun happy news, worth the 5 seconds. Maybe
not hn material.

Edit: Free from memory of a spanish flu documentary I watched the other day:
"As I entered the train, the conductor fell dead on floor. As the journey went
on, I saw two more passengers die. Then the train stopped. The loco pilot had
died, and I walked the rest of the way home."

Spanish flu was some heavy shit. With young healthy people dying the first day
of symptoms.

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yurlungur
I think some people are just blessed with great genes and great health/immune
system throughout their lives. There are stories of 100+ yos who smoke, who
eat typical comfort food everyday, who drink in moderation but consistently
etc etc, whose lifestyles are what we basically understand as negative for
your health but they are unaffected.

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steveeq1
Survivorship bias.

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asjw
If we are measuring survival, surviving is not a bias, it's a data point

Without taking into account genes can you explain why Japan has 54 centenaries
every 100k people, France 34, Italy 33 and US only 22?

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bentcorner
Supercentenarians and the oldest-old are concentrated into regions with no
birth certificates and short lifespans

[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v1)

HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625547](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625547)

~~~
asjw
Sardinia contains only 1/60 of Italian population.

The post you linked does not look very reliable

Moreover I'm not talking about super centenaries, but basic life expectancy

People who live more in general have probably better genes, we don't care how
many die if we are counting those that survive longer than average

In US life expectancy is very low for being a developed country

And we can't really say that crime rate or frauds are higher in Okinawa than
in Los Angeles

Nobody would believe that

Btw, what about France?

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hanoz
_Surely_ by now we should have enough data to make some serious progress on
why this virus has such wildly different effects on different people.

~~~
avip
We don't even know why seasonal flu occasionally kills healthy people.

~~~
adventured
We do have some increased understanding of that at this point. It's their own
immune system reaction that often kills those people. It's happening with
Covid as well in younger people that are otherwise healthy.

And we know that 90% of all Covid cases are occuring in areas in a temp zone
of 37-64 degrees. Covid hates higher temperatures, as with influenza. The
media refuses to report the facts: not all locations are equally susceptible.
It's why NY and NJ have 50% of all US cases now. It's why the Phoenix metro of
five million people, or the states of Nevada or New Mexico or Texas are not
seeing the pandemic. It's why so many of Florida's cases are imported. It's
why when you cross below roughly the Pennsylvania line, cases per capita
plunge. It's why DC and Baltimore aren't drowning in cases, while NYC is
(check out the lack of cases and hospitalizations in Delaware and Virginia).
It's why the bay area, despite its near 8m population, has so few cases (which
the media breathlessly touts as suddenly about to explode into the trillions -
it's not going to happen). It's why Mexico, the rest of Latin America, and sub
saharan Africa (as well as hot climates in Asia, including within China), are
not seeing the pandemic in the numbers that were expected. It's why NYC,
Milan, and Wuhan got hit so hard. It's the climates.

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giovan-ni
101-year-old Italians are making the news so often lately:

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/12/home-
office-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/12/home-office-tells-
man-101-his-parents-must-confirm-id)

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Ericson2314
Forget young people, Mr. Thiel should get some of his blood.

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melling
Perhaps because she had the Spanish flu? That was a theory

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officialjunk
surviving is one thing. to what degree was the permanent lung damage?
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/here-
is-w...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/here-is-what-
coronavirus-does-to-the-body/)

~~~
officialjunk
i think the downvoters don’t realize many are not recovering fully because of
the collateral damage the immune system does to the lungs to beat covid19.

