Susceptibility to Flu Virus Maps Strongly to Your First Exposure

The previous thinking was it was 'luck of the draw' as to how much flu will affect you but the current research shows your first exposure to flu in your life is strongly important to your vulnerability later in life.  It's specifically the first occurrence which carries that importance.  (Science Daily:  Your birth year predicts your odds if flu pandemic were to strike)

Your birth year predicts -- to a certain extent -- how likely you are to get seriously ill or die in an outbreak of an animal-origin influenza virus, according to a study co-led by researchers from the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Until now, it was believed that previous exposure to a flu virus conferred little or no immunological protection against new influenza viruses that can jump from animals into humans. The results, to be published in Science on Nov. 11, could hold important clues for public health measures aimed at curbing the risks of a major flu outbreak.

- See article for detail -

Analyzing data from every known case of severe illness or death from influenza caused by these two strains, the researchers discovered that whichever human influenza strain a person happened to be exposed to during his or her first infection with flu virus as a child determines which novel, avian-origin flu strains they would be protected against in a future infection. This effect of "immunological imprinting" appears to be exclusively dependent on the very first exposure to flu virus encountered in life -- and difficult to reverse.

- Science Daily

This doesn't seem like it maps to the birth year so much as the first time you were infected but the indication is strong from that for how much any future outbreak will affect you.

My first experience with flu was at sixteen or seventeen and I know I was delirious plus I'm told my temperature hit 107F.  From that I assume if I ever get it again then I'm probably not croaked by it but the infection will suck like the first time.  It was such a bitch that first time that I got flu shots from then on every season or almost all of them.

Spider terror and flu terror, that's me.  It might have been better if I had developed some motorcycle terror.

The information from the research probably isn't all that useful for the individual but it will give CDC or some other organization a reasonable idea of the severity of the impact of any given flu virus which comes around that year.