well yes, venom is venom and it is pretty strange stuff. The paper wasp affects lots of people badly, there's something about it which made my lungs feel semi-paralysed, but anaphylaxis is the immune system going over the top. Having experienced it so many times now I can tell when it's about to happen, I can feel it in my head, it's like a saucepan of milk boiling over on the stove and after I survived that I still could not raise my head off the floor because I couldn't get enough oxygen and that was the venom of the wasp. It lasted about another 2 hours and slowly faded off.
Though there are distinct differences between being shocked by different substances there are some things that are the same, the collapse is the same, the length of time it takes to ride that boil over is the same, unless the medical profession gets involved, then all bets are off and I would never call for an ambulance even if I had the phone in my hand - it fixes itself in around one and three quarter hours. It takes about three years to recover fully, I can feel it. If I can go that long without a shock, as now, then whatever stores it is that aid my system in surviving are back up to full supply.
It's just so fascinating so complex, I feel like all the science we have is nowhere close to understanding what is happening.
One little tidbit from the Spanish flu tv show was the story of a man which had been recorded so we heard him telling it, how this nurse saved his life, his lungs were failing, she got the doctor to come and he said to him I am going to give you an injection and it's going to make you jump and it certainly did, he said - it saved him. It was strychnine!
Approximate death toll from the Spanish flu - 15 million. 15,000 in Australia, though we were the last country to get it.
