7 ms·

I'm not sure how the media should report on deaths over 80, or even over 90. It's not that old people aren't worthy of protection, but when you're 85 in the US

I'm not sure how the media should report on deaths over 80, or even over 90. It's not that old people aren't worthy of protection, but when you're 85 in the US you have a 10% chance of dying in the next year for any and all reasons. So saying this disease kills 15% (for example) of 80+ year olds without context sounds horrific, but contextualized in the actual risks of just being very old to begin with, sounds much less scary. If Italy, for example, were to report on the number of fatal infections in people younger than the natural life expectancy, the fatality rate would drop in half.

black_puppydog 7y ago
you could also say that for people 80 and above, this epidemic will more than double their already significant chances of dying this year...
- toolz 7y ago
  That's a really hard thing to say this early. For all we know many 80+ people are asymptomatic and most older people aren't negatively affected at all by covid 19. It seems really dangerous to conflate actual mortality rate with mortality rate among the confirmed cases. Those numbers will be drastically different with diseases that have many asymptomatic carriers.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... 80+ age category has a 21.9% death rate in confirmed cases.
    - chiefalchemist 7y ago
      Of those in that group what % had a pre-existing condition? That is, is it age or age + illness? My sense is it's the latter.
      - tremon 7y ago
        I don't have the numbers ready, but my guesstimate is that about 100% had the pre-existing condition of old age.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- asjw 7y ago
  My parents are in the range And they live in Italy Still the heat wave in 2003 killed 18 thousands people in a month and 15k in France in only half a month. Old people are vulnerable to many things, unfortunately
flukus 7y ago
> It's not that old people aren't worthy of protection, but when you're 85 in the US you have a 10% chance of dying in the next year for any and all reasons. Some of the people that die from this would have died anyway, but for the most part this is on top of that 10% chance. Same for young people, there's something like a 0.2 chance of death every year and this is basically doubling that.
paulryanrogers 7y ago
Fatality numbers won't reflect those who developed permanent lung damage or had to go into intensive care. Best not to suggest anything that might down play the seriousness considering how infectious this virus is. (Otherwise it may encourage risky behavior.)
- toolz 7y ago
  but what about the risks of over-selling this disease? Look at Italy for example. I've read self-reports from healthcare workers claiming 200% hospital capacity. I can only image the needless death resulting from such panic. Mind you that isn't covid 19 putting them over-capacity. In the worst hit region in Italy (Lombardy) confirmed covid 19 cases represent enough cases to take up less than 10% of their hospital beds. So it seems incredibly unlikely anything but panic is to blame for such absurdly high over capacity.
  - adventured 7y ago
    Your 10% premise is wrong because you're conflating intensive care capacity and regular hospital beds. You can't just put Covid patients in with the general hospital population and it isn't trivial to convert other hospital beds to the requirements of Covid while ensuring you keep everyone else in the hospital safe from infection. Lombardy does not have anywhere near enough intensive care capacity to handle the cases they've already seen, much less anything further. You can see that in the death rate, it's happening because they can't care for the volume of older intensive care patients properly. They don't have the medical infrastructure capacity to do it. That's why Italy and other European nations such as France have an extreme variance in mortality rates, despite France and Italy both having similarly old populations. Germany is even older than Italy and I'm skeptical we're going to see anywhere near a 6% mortality rate there (their rate is very low so far). Italy's mortality rate has been abnormally high from the first few thousand cases in, when it quickly began overloading their healthcare system in Lombardy.
    - toolz 7y ago
      A quick google suggests around 15% of hospital beds are ICU and covid 19 cases that end up in the hospital, only 5% end up in ICU. So that's an interesting line of thinking but it lacks supporting evidence that covid 19 is overwhelming ICU. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032 edit to address your edit: The mortality rate is often wildly inflated with new diseases. That's because most people don't seem to understand real mortality rate vs confirmed cases mortality rate. Obviously when a disease is new the confirmed cases will be confirmed against the people showing serious symptoms. Then when you pretend deaths/confirmed cases == mortality rate you end up with a wildly inflated mortality rate. Until we understand how many people are asymptomatic we won't have a real mortality rate that is reliable.
koheripbal 7y ago
You will not feel this way when you're 80
- imtringued 7y ago
  The problem is that this disease forces everyone to pretend they are 80. Give the old the care they need but don't drag down the young.
sgw928 7y ago
Also when 85+ year olds die for other reasons, they don't all occupy ICUs for days or even weeks as in the case of COVID-19.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cma 7y ago
An additional factor in why the death rate is so high in >75 year olds is that most deaths happen when ICUs are overwhelmed, and older ages get triaged into not getting a ventilator. There is a much higher rate for them naturally, but this amplifies the disparity even more.
mitchdoogle 7y ago
I'm surprised to hear someone be so blunt about their ageism. This thing has brought about a great deal of it already, with many saying, " it only affects the elderly" as if that's a worthwhile argument for not being too worried. Reminds one of indifference to AIDS in the 80s because it "only affects homosexuals"

black_puppydog 7y ago

you could also say that for people 80 and above, this epidemic will more than double their already significant chances of dying this year...

toolz 7y ago
That's a really hard thing to say this early. For all we know many 80+ people are asymptomatic and most older people aren't negatively affected at all by covid 19. It seems really dangerous to conflate actual mortality rate with mortality rate among the confirmed cases. Those numbers will be drastically different with diseases that have many asymptomatic carriers.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... 80+ age category has a 21.9% death rate in confirmed cases.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    Of those in that group what % had a pre-existing condition? That is, is it age or age + illness? My sense is it's the latter.
    - tremon 7y ago
      I don't have the numbers ready, but my guesstimate is that about 100% had the pre-existing condition of old age.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
asjw 7y ago
My parents are in the range And they live in Italy Still the heat wave in 2003 killed 18 thousands people in a month and 15k in France in only half a month. Old people are vulnerable to many things, unfortunately

flukus 7y ago

> It's not that old people aren't worthy of protection, but when you're 85 in the US you have a 10% chance of dying in the next year for any and all reasons. Some of the people that die from this would have died anyway, but for the most part this is on top of that 10% chance. Same for young people, there's something like a 0.2 chance of death every year and this is basically doubling that.

paulryanrogers 7y ago

Fatality numbers won't reflect those who developed permanent lung damage or had to go into intensive care. Best not to suggest anything that might down play the seriousness considering how infectious this virus is. (Otherwise it may encourage risky behavior.)

toolz 7y ago
but what about the risks of over-selling this disease? Look at Italy for example. I've read self-reports from healthcare workers claiming 200% hospital capacity. I can only image the needless death resulting from such panic. Mind you that isn't covid 19 putting them over-capacity. In the worst hit region in Italy (Lombardy) confirmed covid 19 cases represent enough cases to take up less than 10% of their hospital beds. So it seems incredibly unlikely anything but panic is to blame for such absurdly high over capacity.
- adventured 7y ago
  Your 10% premise is wrong because you're conflating intensive care capacity and regular hospital beds. You can't just put Covid patients in with the general hospital population and it isn't trivial to convert other hospital beds to the requirements of Covid while ensuring you keep everyone else in the hospital safe from infection. Lombardy does not have anywhere near enough intensive care capacity to handle the cases they've already seen, much less anything further. You can see that in the death rate, it's happening because they can't care for the volume of older intensive care patients properly. They don't have the medical infrastructure capacity to do it. That's why Italy and other European nations such as France have an extreme variance in mortality rates, despite France and Italy both having similarly old populations. Germany is even older than Italy and I'm skeptical we're going to see anywhere near a 6% mortality rate there (their rate is very low so far). Italy's mortality rate has been abnormally high from the first few thousand cases in, when it quickly began overloading their healthcare system in Lombardy.
  - toolz 7y ago
    A quick google suggests around 15% of hospital beds are ICU and covid 19 cases that end up in the hospital, only 5% end up in ICU. So that's an interesting line of thinking but it lacks supporting evidence that covid 19 is overwhelming ICU. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032 edit to address your edit: The mortality rate is often wildly inflated with new diseases. That's because most people don't seem to understand real mortality rate vs confirmed cases mortality rate. Obviously when a disease is new the confirmed cases will be confirmed against the people showing serious symptoms. Then when you pretend deaths/confirmed cases == mortality rate you end up with a wildly inflated mortality rate. Until we understand how many people are asymptomatic we won't have a real mortality rate that is reliable.

koheripbal 7y ago

You will not feel this way when you're 80

imtringued 7y ago
The problem is that this disease forces everyone to pretend they are 80. Give the old the care they need but don't drag down the young.

sgw928 7y ago

Also when 85+ year olds die for other reasons, they don't all occupy ICUs for days or even weeks as in the case of COVID-19.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cma 7y ago

An additional factor in why the death rate is so high in >75 year olds is that most deaths happen when ICUs are overwhelmed, and older ages get triaged into not getting a ventilator. There is a much higher rate for them naturally, but this amplifies the disparity even more.

mitchdoogle 7y ago

I'm surprised to hear someone be so blunt about their ageism. This thing has brought about a great deal of it already, with many saying, " it only affects the elderly" as if that's a worthwhile argument for not being too worried. Reminds one of indifference to AIDS in the 80s because it "only affects homosexuals"