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Very interesting indeed.

Myself, I think I've taken permanent damage from past flus. I've had a few where I was coughing up blood. So I think I would be very likely to be in deep trouble and maybe kick the bucket if a tremendously virulent strain became extremely widespread.

On both the negative and the positive side, I've been living with and working with a great percentage of people who have lots of kids. Those kids go to school and bring home viruses to their parents, who pass them around work. Someone is ALWAYS sick at work; there are usually at least two different bugs going around. So I've been exposed to a ton of viruses over many years. I'm thinking my immune system might have more previous exposure to a lot of flu strains than most people's, and that could stand my immune system in good stead.

On the negative side, being exposed to those same people is just more likely to get me exposed the next time, and the building where I live is full of kids, so even if I holed up indoors, I'm sure I'd still get exposure somehow. And just going to the supermarket would effectively expose me to basically the whole planet.

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The H5N1 virus has never been seen before in the human body so having past flu strains will not matter. As far as the people who said they have been good immune systems, it does not seem to matter with pandemic strains such as this one. Whereas in normal flu cases, most deaths occur in the elderly or infant population, a pandemic strain such as H5N1 kills off seemingly healthy young adults just the same as an elderly or infant patient.