102-Year-Old Woman Who Lived Through 1918 Pandemic Survives COVID-19 Twice

Look, in my years as an ER nurse and now covering health stories, you see a lot of cases. But this one? This one just makes you stop and think about human resilience.

Angelina Friedman, a 102-year-old New York woman, has now beaten COVID-19 twice. And get this – she was born during the 1918 flu pandemic on a ship bringing Italian immigrants to New York City. Her mother died giving birth.

“My mother is a survivor,” her daughter Joanne Merola told reporters. “She has super-human DNA.”

CNN reports that Friedman first contracted the virus in March after being transferred from her nursing home in Lake Mohegan for a minor procedure. The diagnosis came as a surprise because she wasn’t even symptomatic – just a fever that lasted about 10 days.

The second time was different. In late October, shortly before her 102nd birthday, she got seriously ill. “She had a cough, she was lethargic, she had a fever again,” Merola said. “The first time you wouldn’t know she was sick.”

PIX11 in New York reported the good news on November 17: “My invincible mother tested negative.”

Friedman has outlived her husband Harold and her 10 siblings. She survived cancer, internal bleeding, and sepsis throughout her life. Her daughter attributes her survival to “an iron will to live.” Meanwhile, the pandemic has driven a massive increase in anxiety medication usage among Americans struggling to cope.

“She’s not the oldest to survive COVID,” Merola noted, “but she may be the oldest to survive it twice.”

From a clinical perspective, what we’re seeing here is remarkable. At 102, the immune system typically isn’t capable of mounting this kind of response twice. But clearly, some individuals have biological advantages we dont fully understand yet.

The centenarian is now nearly deaf and has lost most of her vision, but is recovering well and feeling like her old self again.

Makes you think about what the human body is truly capable of, doesnt it?