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Roy Braswell was 9 years old when the flu pandemic of 1918 hit.

"I know it's a bad feeling, 'cause I had it," said Braswell, 100, who now lives in Cobb County in Georgia. "It makes you have headaches, you be out of your head, you don't know nothing."

Margaret Duchez, 94, did not have the flu, but remembers that in 1918 her grandmother locked the door so that she couldn't go outside during the pandemic. In her community near Cleveland, Ohio, people were afraid to go to church, walk in the street or let children play outside, she said. An entire family died around the corner from her.

"People were dying so fast in our parish, which was old St. Patrick's, they could not bury them fast enough," Duchez said.

A study in Nature last year showed survivors of the 1918 pandemic still have some immunity to that virus in the form of B cells, which are immune cells that produce antibodies. Read full article »

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