Life lessons from a 102-year-old who survived COVID-19

LONDON: That’s what 102-year-old Mildred Geraldine “Gerri” Schappals had to say about getting sick with Covid-19 at her assisted living facility in Nashua, New Hampshire, according to local news site WMUR, foreign media reported.

Perhaps Schappals, who was moderately sick for several days, is seemingly unruffled by her bout with the novel coronavirus because she has survived so much: Schappals was born in Massachusetts the year of the Spanish flu pandemic and caught it as a baby; in the ’80s and ’90s she survived breast then colon cancer; and in May, she contracted Covid-19 and fully recovered.

Schappals daughter, Julia Schappals, 68, wasn’t surprised one bit by her mother’s recovery from Covid-19. She credits Schappals’ witty but tough attitude with getting her through trying times. “She always managed to find the humorous/absurd/laughable aspect of anything stressful,” Julia Schappals tells CNBC Make It.

Schappals says her mother was tough from the start. It began when she caught the so-called Spanish flu (an H1N1 avian flu virus) as a 10-month-old baby. Mortality was high for children under 5, and due to her high fever, doctors thought Schappals would likely die.The 1918-19 flu pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide and more than 675,000 people in the U.S., but Schappals survived.