Jayne Keith News Today

Only residents 65 and older are eligible for vaccinations under an executive order issued last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which restricts COVID-19 vaccinations in the first phase to nursing home residents and staff, people 65 and older, medical workers and anyone they deem "extremely vulnerable” to COVID-19. Smith was born in a time when there was no influenza vaccine, and no hope for one. Recalling what she had been told of her childhood, Smith said her father, Harold Will, was statione...

When Jane Smith was born on June 22, 1918, in a hospital in Syracuse, New York, a new and deadly influenza virus had begun to create panic around the world. Her mother, Catherine Will, fell ill with the flu in August, and 2-month-old Jane also started having symptoms of the disease, presumably transmitted by her mother’s breast milk.   Smith survived the flu, but Catherine did not. She died at the age of 25 in November 1918.  The flu pandemic, which raged from 1918 to 1919, is estimat...