Reply #19: And influenza A is the worst

[SheilaT]

of the (I think there are three) types. The Spanish Flu was a type A.

The good news is, if you've had and recovered from a particular strain of flu you're pretty much immune to it forever. One reason why so few old people succumb to the 1918 Spanish flu was that about fifty years earlier there had been an outbreak of a type A flu, and many of the older folks already had immunity.