A study in England has claimed that people born before 1969 seem to bear some immunity to a virus that was never known to affect people until 1997. In 2008 a panel of WHO experts reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that “approximately 15 to 20% of older adults have some baseline neutralizing antibodies to H5N1 virus….”
THE GLORY DAZE GO ON AND ONWhile I like Boomers (who could fail to cherish their childlike egocentricities?), it’s a little creepy to think that nature may be contriving to help them outlast me.
For those few who might wonder how these lucky geezers acquired immunity to H5N1, the authors quietly added: “The mechanisms leading to these antibodies are uncertain.” The deeper I dig, the more I see how little the experts know about influenza.