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I joined a community group that is doing just this, and as an hour ago have a list of older neighbors to check in on, and possibly help with obtaining food and

I joined a community group that is doing just this, and as an hour ago have a list of older neighbors to check in on, and possibly help with obtaining food and medications. I do wonder if at 39 i am in fact young enough to be in the most-likely-to-survive-if-exposed group.

OakNinja 7y ago
As long as you don’t have any other diseases, you’re statistically sort of “safe”. 0.2% risk of dying for your age group regardless of physical health according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... Wash your hands, stay safe.
- bronipstid 7y ago
  For comparison, the death rate across all age groups of flu is 0.1%. Extrapolating out, a failure to contain the virus will still mean tens of thousands of young healthy people dying in every country. That's why governments are finally admitting "Herd Immunity/Flatten the Curve" without total containment is not an option.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Flat statements about what strategies are or aren't options don't seem helpful. It's not a good option, ideally we'll have total containment, but it's important that we not see it as a betrayal if it's decided in a couple weeks that total containment isn't feasible.
    - bronipstid 7y ago
      It absolutely would be a betrayal of the people you'd be giving up on to not do everything we can to help them while we still can. You can advocate for or against taking strong action but you can't tell people you're allowing to die to not be upset about it.
      - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        You certainly can't tell people not to be upset! Every death is tragedy; people have a right to be upset even about rarer causes of death that are harder to mitigate. (From personal experience, I can tell you that anyone who's seen an alcoholic family member die learns to sympathize with the Prohibitionists.) But it's not a betrayal to acknowledge their pain while recognizing nothing feasible can be done.
  - ejstronge 7y ago
    > For comparison, the death rate across all age groups of flu is 0.1%. Extrapolating out, a failure to contain the virus will still mean tens of thousands of young healthy people dying in every country. I’m not sure why you’re comparing the all-age mortality of flu to the age-specific mortality of COVID-19. The relevant metric would be about 0.02% [1] 1. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html
    - bronipstid 7y ago
      Why not? It's just giving some context to people who may think .2% is a "low" mortality rate. Thanks for the age specific number. That shows my point even more.
      - ejstronge 7y ago
        Ah, I wasn't sure what point you were trying to make, but I thought the all-age figure understates how much more deadly COVID-19 is compared to influenza.
- guscost 7y ago
  > Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%). Nonsense! Unless we can count every death caused by the virus, and correctly diagnose every infection, then this is a ridiculous (and irresponsible) guess. The number for "all cases" comes from the CCDC paper: > A total of 72,314 patient records—44,672 (61.8%) confirmed cases, 16,186 (22.4%) suspected cases, 10,567 (14.6%) clinically diagnosed cases (Hubei Province only), and 889 asymptomatic cases (1.2%)—contributed data for the analysis. Another more recent study guesses that 86% of cases are asymptomatic and/or otherwise undocumented: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/scie...
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Yeah, it's almost certainly way overblown. People are freaking out over a bad flu season. I could see a case made in a future retrospective that the exponential increase we're seeing in cases is actually an exponential increase in the number of available tests disseminated. Until we have antibody tests, the PCR-based tests we're using will only tell us if you actively have the disease not if you had it ages ago and already recovered. This disease could have easily spread unnoticed (due to the overwhelmingly mild flulike symptoms most people get) for months. Due to its highly-contageous nature, it probably did. Until we calm down and analyze what all actually happened my guess is just as good as anyone else.
    - mrtnmcc 7y ago
      Right now tests are being allocated to critically ill or dead people suspected of Covid-19. Ideally most cause of deaths are caught so the absolute number of deaths are a decent indicator of spread, but they are lagged by probably 7-14 days or the time until critical + testing and reporting time. Also I am 32yo male on day 5 of Covid-19 symptoms and have hopefully been through the worst part (immune response in lungs). AMA.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        AMA: Was it any different than a bad flu for you?
- notahacker 7y ago
  This is one of the few cases where the raw data is so systematically flawed - many younger people are completely asymptomatic or not being tested because they don't need hospitalization - the anecdata might give you a better picture of the relative risk. The youngest of the UK's >100 confirmed COVID-19 fatalities was in his forties and already terminally ill. Young people aren't totally safe and should certainly avoid contracting it if possible with a view to protecting the people they come into contact with and not taking up a hospital bed if they're at the unlucky end of the spectrum, but relatively speaking they're a tiny fraction of the overall casualties, and probably have more exposure to the virus than the elderly due to more active social/work lives.
  - mikeyouse 7y ago
    Not to disagree with anything you said here, but there was recently a story comparing the fates of two young Chinese medical workers who both contracted the disease and who required medical care. The punchline is that a 29-year old physician with no co-morbidities died a terrible death. Be careful out there no matter your age or health status. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/world/asia/coronavirus-death-life.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/world/asia/co...
    - _-___________-_ 7y ago
      This guy is pretty clearly an outlier (or there is some missing information). In Italy only 5 people under 40 have died, out of approx. 2500 deaths so far, and every one of the 5 had an existing serious illness.
      - DanBC 7y ago
        "Didn't die" is not the same as "was not harmed". This relentless focus only on the people who died misses the point: covid-19 puts people in hospital, sometimes into intensive care, and many of those people end up with damaged lungs.
        7y ago
- Vomzor 7y ago
  Survive yes. But half the patients in intensive care in Holland and France are in the 30 to 60 age bracket. And we don’t know yet what the longterm damage is after you survive.
  - Darkphibre 7y ago
    Not to mention that survival rates start to go down as the medical establishment succumbs to the strain. I'm isolating myself as much as possible and engaging in rather stringent protocols (N95 mask and gloves while out/ disrobe, wash clothes, and bathe on return), with the goal of staving off contraction until Fall if at all possible. Maybe the Chloroquine research will prove effective by then. I'm in Kirkland/Redmond, so the risk is higher here than elsewhere at the moment.
tveita 7y ago
Every group is "most-likely-to-survive-if-exposed". The numbers they seem to be working with is around 15% for ages 80+. That's not odds you want to take but it's by no means an automatic death sentence.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  If I'm interpreting the news correctly it seems that even a lot of not-so-old people (30 and up) seem to be ending up in intensive care with some frequencey, but that aspect of it (bad pneumonia) just isn't deadly in healthy people under 50 if you are given quality care. Elderly people seem to suffer myocarditis or failure of other organs. What's worrying about that though, is that the high survival of healthy people under 50 seems to be conditional on the availability of ventilators and ecmo. Few countries can guarantee that in all scenarios.
moultano 7y ago
Along with being young and healthy, the people going out in public to do things should wear gloves and a mask if possible. You might be relatively safe, but you still might take up a hospital bed, and you still might transmit it.
- nsxwolf 7y ago
  We're being told by the medical establishment, quite angrily, that masks are useless - unless you work in the medical establishment, then they're essential. Who is right?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - T-hawk 7y ago
    A mask doesn't "work" in the sense of preventing you from catching the virus, because airborne is not its transmission method. A mask does work in the sense of reducing your transmission to others if you are infected (and may not know it), by keeping your moisture-laden exhalations confined. A mask can reduce your risk by reminding you not to touch your face after having contacted potentially infectious surfaces. And there are different types of masks. Simple cotton patches aren't what the medical establishment needs, they don't filter micron-size virus particles. There are surgical-grade masks that do, and that's what medical workers need.
    - ardy42 7y ago
      We really need to start distinguishing between masks and respirators. Surgical masks are useless for protecting the wearer from infected people, however they help protect others from an infected wearer. If used properly, a respirator will help protect the wearer from infected people, as it will block them from inhaling virus-containing droplets.
      - hawaiianbrah 7y ago
        I don’t see how they’re completely useless for protecting the wearer. If someone infected sneezes in my face, would I not be better off with a physical barrier over a point of entry into my system?
davidgl 7y ago
https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/ https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-c...
_-___________-_ 7y ago
Some numbers from Italy: - 48.5% of people who died had three or more other illnesses - 25.6% of people who died had two other illnesses - 25.1% of people who died had one other illness - Overall, 99.2% of people who died had at least one other illness - Average age of those that died was 79.5 Of the 2500 or so people that have died: - only 17 people were under 50 - only 5 people were under 40 and all 5 had an existing serious illness https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_17_marzo-v2.pdf https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...

OakNinja 7y ago

As long as you don’t have any other diseases, you’re statistically sort of “safe”. 0.2% risk of dying for your age group regardless of physical health according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... Wash your hands, stay safe.

bronipstid 7y ago
For comparison, the death rate across all age groups of flu is 0.1%. Extrapolating out, a failure to contain the virus will still mean tens of thousands of young healthy people dying in every country. That's why governments are finally admitting "Herd Immunity/Flatten the Curve" without total containment is not an option.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Flat statements about what strategies are or aren't options don't seem helpful. It's not a good option, ideally we'll have total containment, but it's important that we not see it as a betrayal if it's decided in a couple weeks that total containment isn't feasible.
  - bronipstid 7y ago
    It absolutely would be a betrayal of the people you'd be giving up on to not do everything we can to help them while we still can. You can advocate for or against taking strong action but you can't tell people you're allowing to die to not be upset about it.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      You certainly can't tell people not to be upset! Every death is tragedy; people have a right to be upset even about rarer causes of death that are harder to mitigate. (From personal experience, I can tell you that anyone who's seen an alcoholic family member die learns to sympathize with the Prohibitionists.) But it's not a betrayal to acknowledge their pain while recognizing nothing feasible can be done.
- ejstronge 7y ago
  > For comparison, the death rate across all age groups of flu is 0.1%. Extrapolating out, a failure to contain the virus will still mean tens of thousands of young healthy people dying in every country. I’m not sure why you’re comparing the all-age mortality of flu to the age-specific mortality of COVID-19. The relevant metric would be about 0.02% [1] 1. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html
  - bronipstid 7y ago
    Why not? It's just giving some context to people who may think .2% is a "low" mortality rate. Thanks for the age specific number. That shows my point even more.
    - ejstronge 7y ago
      Ah, I wasn't sure what point you were trying to make, but I thought the all-age figure understates how much more deadly COVID-19 is compared to influenza.
guscost 7y ago
> Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by the virus (%). Nonsense! Unless we can count every death caused by the virus, and correctly diagnose every infection, then this is a ridiculous (and irresponsible) guess. The number for "all cases" comes from the CCDC paper: > A total of 72,314 patient records—44,672 (61.8%) confirmed cases, 16,186 (22.4%) suspected cases, 10,567 (14.6%) clinically diagnosed cases (Hubei Province only), and 889 asymptomatic cases (1.2%)—contributed data for the analysis. Another more recent study guesses that 86% of cases are asymptomatic and/or otherwise undocumented: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/scie...
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Yeah, it's almost certainly way overblown. People are freaking out over a bad flu season. I could see a case made in a future retrospective that the exponential increase we're seeing in cases is actually an exponential increase in the number of available tests disseminated. Until we have antibody tests, the PCR-based tests we're using will only tell us if you actively have the disease not if you had it ages ago and already recovered. This disease could have easily spread unnoticed (due to the overwhelmingly mild flulike symptoms most people get) for months. Due to its highly-contageous nature, it probably did. Until we calm down and analyze what all actually happened my guess is just as good as anyone else.
  - mrtnmcc 7y ago
    Right now tests are being allocated to critically ill or dead people suspected of Covid-19. Ideally most cause of deaths are caught so the absolute number of deaths are a decent indicator of spread, but they are lagged by probably 7-14 days or the time until critical + testing and reporting time. Also I am 32yo male on day 5 of Covid-19 symptoms and have hopefully been through the worst part (immune response in lungs). AMA.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      AMA: Was it any different than a bad flu for you?
notahacker 7y ago
This is one of the few cases where the raw data is so systematically flawed - many younger people are completely asymptomatic or not being tested because they don't need hospitalization - the anecdata might give you a better picture of the relative risk. The youngest of the UK's >100 confirmed COVID-19 fatalities was in his forties and already terminally ill. Young people aren't totally safe and should certainly avoid contracting it if possible with a view to protecting the people they come into contact with and not taking up a hospital bed if they're at the unlucky end of the spectrum, but relatively speaking they're a tiny fraction of the overall casualties, and probably have more exposure to the virus than the elderly due to more active social/work lives.
- mikeyouse 7y ago
  Not to disagree with anything you said here, but there was recently a story comparing the fates of two young Chinese medical workers who both contracted the disease and who required medical care. The punchline is that a 29-year old physician with no co-morbidities died a terrible death. Be careful out there no matter your age or health status. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/world/asia/coronavirus-death-life.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/world/asia/co...
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    This guy is pretty clearly an outlier (or there is some missing information). In Italy only 5 people under 40 have died, out of approx. 2500 deaths so far, and every one of the 5 had an existing serious illness.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      "Didn't die" is not the same as "was not harmed". This relentless focus only on the people who died misses the point: covid-19 puts people in hospital, sometimes into intensive care, and many of those people end up with damaged lungs.
      - 7y ago
Vomzor 7y ago
Survive yes. But half the patients in intensive care in Holland and France are in the 30 to 60 age bracket. And we don’t know yet what the longterm damage is after you survive.
- Darkphibre 7y ago
  Not to mention that survival rates start to go down as the medical establishment succumbs to the strain. I'm isolating myself as much as possible and engaging in rather stringent protocols (N95 mask and gloves while out/ disrobe, wash clothes, and bathe on return), with the goal of staving off contraction until Fall if at all possible. Maybe the Chloroquine research will prove effective by then. I'm in Kirkland/Redmond, so the risk is higher here than elsewhere at the moment.

tveita 7y ago

Every group is "most-likely-to-survive-if-exposed". The numbers they seem to be working with is around 15% for ages 80+. That's not odds you want to take but it's by no means an automatic death sentence.

alkonaut 7y ago
If I'm interpreting the news correctly it seems that even a lot of not-so-old people (30 and up) seem to be ending up in intensive care with some frequencey, but that aspect of it (bad pneumonia) just isn't deadly in healthy people under 50 if you are given quality care. Elderly people seem to suffer myocarditis or failure of other organs. What's worrying about that though, is that the high survival of healthy people under 50 seems to be conditional on the availability of ventilators and ecmo. Few countries can guarantee that in all scenarios.

moultano 7y ago

Along with being young and healthy, the people going out in public to do things should wear gloves and a mask if possible. You might be relatively safe, but you still might take up a hospital bed, and you still might transmit it.

nsxwolf 7y ago
We're being told by the medical establishment, quite angrily, that masks are useless - unless you work in the medical establishment, then they're essential. Who is right?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- T-hawk 7y ago
  A mask doesn't "work" in the sense of preventing you from catching the virus, because airborne is not its transmission method. A mask does work in the sense of reducing your transmission to others if you are infected (and may not know it), by keeping your moisture-laden exhalations confined. A mask can reduce your risk by reminding you not to touch your face after having contacted potentially infectious surfaces. And there are different types of masks. Simple cotton patches aren't what the medical establishment needs, they don't filter micron-size virus particles. There are surgical-grade masks that do, and that's what medical workers need.
  - ardy42 7y ago
    We really need to start distinguishing between masks and respirators. Surgical masks are useless for protecting the wearer from infected people, however they help protect others from an infected wearer. If used properly, a respirator will help protect the wearer from infected people, as it will block them from inhaling virus-containing droplets.
    - hawaiianbrah 7y ago
      I don’t see how they’re completely useless for protecting the wearer. If someone infected sneezes in my face, would I not be better off with a physical barrier over a point of entry into my system?

davidgl 7y ago

https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/ https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-c...

_-___________-_ 7y ago

Some numbers from Italy: - 48.5% of people who died had three or more other illnesses - 25.6% of people who died had two other illnesses - 25.1% of people who died had one other illness - Overall, 99.2% of people who died had at least one other illness - Average age of those that died was 79.5 Of the 2500 or so people that have died: - only 17 people were under 50 - only 5 people were under 40 and all 5 had an existing serious illness https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_17_marzo-v2.pdf https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...