General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Fewer than half in USA get flu shots, CDC says ~ USA Today [View all]SheilaT
(23,156 posts)that around fifty years earlier, a similar strain of flu had gone around. The older people had mostly been exposed and were now immune.
I had flu any number of times growing up. I made it through the Asian flu epidemic in 1957. and the Hong Kong flu in 1968. I seem to be immune to flu these days. I don't get it. Haven't gotten it in some forty years. Periodically people here will accuse me of therefore being an asymptomatic carrier and I'm probably infecting everyone around me every flu season. I don't think so.
Likewise I last got a cold five years ago. I've been exposed to enough different cold viruses in my lifetime that I'm not very likely to meet up with a cold virus I haven't already had. Yes, it could certainly happen, and if it does I'll have a cold.
And while measles and the other "childhood" diseases can have serious consequences, the up side of getting the disease is that you now have a permanent immunity. A few years ago when I got a new job, they wanted to when I'd been immunized against various diseases. I laughed and pointed out that I was born in 1948 and I had all those diseases.