9 ms·

Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

103 points by rwol 7y ago

derision 7y ago
Her aunt is the one claiming she had no pre-existing conditions. I'd like to see a statement from a medical professional and an autopsy
- tallanvor 7y ago
  Yeah. No known preexisting conditions is very different from no preexisting conditions. That being said, it's certainly possible that she was just unlucky and the virus hit her harder than normal for people her age, or she caught some other bug at the same time.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    It can happen I recall a student where I worked, broke his leg in an evening cricket match, he died before morning.
  - ProstetnicJeltz 7y ago
    Also we need to remember what the relevant pre-existing conditions here are. I think most people are immediately thinking severe asthma, COPD, recent or current cancer treatment; and while all of those elevate your risk, they aren't the most common comorbidities. The key co-morbidities are high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Only heart disease seems obvious - high blood pressure is almost standard, and diabetes is often managed well to the point of invisibility. The cardiac link appears interesting. Patients who are given ECMO, a complete lung bypass alternative to ventilators, have still died after their lungs recovered.
  - 8fingerlouie 7y ago
    She could have a specific mutation in her DNA that protects against other things, that somehow makes COVID-19 worse. Like the CCR5-Delta32 mutation makes 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050325234239.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050325234239.h...). There are other mutations that appears to combat virus more effectively, but who's to say that there are not mutations that are beneficial for some disease, but catastrophic for others ?
  - throwqwerty 7y ago
    >No known preexisting conditions is very different from no preexisting conditions. but you can easily have regular checkups and still have an undiscovered (unknown) pre-existing condition. so what is the difference?
  - zuminator 7y ago
    But assuming this person had an unknown pre-existing condition is no comfort at all. It just means that anyone could equally have an unknown pre-existing condition that would similarly render then susceptible.
  - lopis 7y ago
    The thing is how do you know you don't have any commodities. Specially if you're in your 20s lots of congenital defects might have not had the chance to be a problem.
ekvilibrist 7y ago
Smoking? Vaping? From what I've heard about other cases its highly unlikely but not impossible to die from Covid-19 if otherwise young and healthy...
- sjg007 7y ago
  Occam's razor: what you've heard is simply incorrect.
  - dreary_dugong 7y ago
    I'd argue that Occam's razor would state that this article is inaccurate rather than the plethora of sources about age and pre-existing conditions.
    - klyrs 7y ago
      I'd argue that this is a single datapoint out of nearly 20k deaths. Are the odds of dying young with zero pre-existing conditions on the order of 1:20k, or exactly zero? Is death from covid rare or impossible?
      - derision 7y ago
        Most of what I've seen so far seems to suggest it works more like AIDs, where it weakens something (in this case, epithelial cells in the lungs) which allows other opportunistic issues to arise (bacterial pneumonia for example). So rather than dying "from the virus", you die from another underlying issue. Similar to how AIDs doesn't kill you, it just makes it easier for everything else to kill you
        klyrs 7y ago
        We have a choice here: strongly hold onto generalizations derived from early analysis, or keep an open mind about new developments in the rapidly growing data. By all means folks should scrutinize these developments as they arrived, but we should keep Dunning-Kreuger in mind: there's a whole lot we don't know about this virus.
jhayward 7y ago
I'm puzzled by the intense focus on whether someone who dies had a pre-existing condition. It's like people want to convict the person for their own death, make it look like they were irresponsible, as a denial mechanism. By blaming the person for succumbing to the virus they can fall in to the US-centric mindset of blaming people for their own disfortune, poverty, illness, accident, lack of whiteness, etc. It's really stupid, unless you are a physician treating cases, to focus this way. It keeps us from dealing with the reality of the pandemic. Edit: for those objecting to my observation, see the responses linked below, which were the only ones present when I replied. I've seen this pattern often enough over the last few days to realize that it's not simply people seeking information about the nature of the disease, it is something else, more reactionary and emotional. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684817
- adamc 7y ago
  Trying to understand the risk factors is not blame.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  Huh? It's well documented by now that comorbidities increase the risk of death from COVID considerably. Articles like this make the news because they're fighting the myth that the young and healthy cannot die from it.
  - jhayward 7y ago
    > Articles like this make the news because they're fighting the myth that the young and healthy cannot die from it. Yes, but look at the comments from when I made mine: they were all of the nature of "I bet they had some other problem". Once you've seen this reaction enough it begins to look less like information-seeking and more like denial.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
throw1234651234 7y ago
There is also that whole getting no food, no sleep, and otherwise compromising your immune system thing.
- rob74 7y ago
  On the other hand, there is evidence that some of the patients die due to an excessive response of the immune systen: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21176783/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-china-treatment-cytokine-storm-syndrome https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21176783/coronavirus-covid-19-...
chrisseaton 7y ago
> this so-called virus It is a virus, isn't it?
- swsieber 7y ago
  The pedant in me says technically the name of the virus "SARS-CoV-2" but lots of people are referring to the virus by the disease name of "COVID-19". Maybe that's why? The pragmatic side of me says "Yeah, what the heck. It's clearly known" Edit: Rereading it, the quote is directed at people who are skeptical of it's existence. So it makes sense in context.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    Ah it's like HIV and AIDS, isn't it? SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19, and COVID-19 is not the virus but the disease. She's right.
    - GuiA 7y ago
      Easy mnemonic: COVID-19 stands for COrona VIrus Disease 2019.
      - dhimes 7y ago
        No kidding? I've been remembering it as COrona Virus Infectious Disease 2019. I haven't seen a source on this though- just made sense since CoV was established early in the timeline as corona virus.
      - marcosdumay 7y ago
        Yes, it's very easy to remember that the disease is named by the virus, and the virus is named by the disease :) I still wonder who got that brilliant idea.
    - dhimes 7y ago
      Yes. It took a while for WHO to name it. They didn't want to call it SARS because it was too frightening- SARS caused a lot of devastation in Asia. From the WHO website Q and A [1]: Is COVID-19 the same as SARS? No. The virus that causes COVID-19 and the one that caused the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 are related to each other genetically, but the diseases they cause are quite different. SARS was more deadly but much less infectious than COVID-19. There have been no outbreaks of SARS anywhere in the world since 2003. [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses I went to the WHO website to document my first assertion, that they chose the name to not cause fear and confusion with SARS, but didn't find it. It used to be right on the front page explaining the virus- they also explained the name.
sonicggg 7y ago
It seems that anecdotal evidence of young people dying of COVID-19 is the trend of the moment. Not sure if it's just cheap clickbait or the goal is to make younger generations to actually care about social distancing. The deal is that we are dealing with the power of large numbers. You can cherry-pick whatever case you want to fit your narrative. It does not mean its relevant information.
- spyspy 7y ago
  Anecdotally, my parents keep bringing up this narrative every time we talk on the phone. I've reminded them that while me and my fiance dutifully haven't left the house since last Sunday they've happily gone to the grocery store multiple times, attended a funeral, and had wine at their neighbor's house. They also refused to stop babysitting my niece and nephew until I called my brother and convinced him to stop dropping them off. But no, young people are the reckless ones.
  - corpMaverick 7y ago
    As a parent of a young man. I understand why your parents have these fears. They know what they are doing, but they don´t know what you are doing other than what you tell them. Even if they trust you, this is a deeper fear. You could start lecturing your parents about how dangerous this is, so they are convinced that you are taking it seriously.
    - beat 7y ago
      As the parent of adult children currently living at home... one of ours keeps going out to be with friends. I understand she needs to get out of the house sometimes, but it's unnerving, knowing the points of contact (she often goes to her boyfriend's house, with his five currently-unemployed roommates). Then again, she works in a children's health clinic. I know what vector is probably going to bring COVID into our house.
      - SamBam 7y ago
        I would really hope that someone working in a health clinic would be more careful than that. Going over to other people's houses is exactly what people are not supposed to be doing. From my observations, the people who are most flippant about this seem to be boomers and young adults 20-25. I still see groups of young adults on the sidewalks, clearly not roommates, even though our state is in lockdown, and we're right next to a state that's starting to overwhelm their hospitals because of this kind of behavior.
throwanem 7y ago
It's easy to find an article like this very frightening, if you're young and healthy and have been thinking there's thus no chance you'll die of COVID-19 if (more likely when, tbh) you get it. I already have it, so I totally understand that. But this is the first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease, and we're over a hundred thousand confirmed cases in. Even assuming the current understanding is accurate, and this person didn't have some undiagnosed comorbidity, that's on the order of a .001% chance of dying. For a pandemic disease, those are very good odds. Yes, it's frightening, and in frightening times. But it's important to keep a sense of perspective. After all, stressing out over this can only weaken your defenses.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  A 13 year old died in Panama on Monday, but again, no confirmation on her health from a doctor. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/panama-13-year-girl-coronavirus-dies-officials-200323193144873.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/panama-13-year-girl-c...
  - throwanem 7y ago
    One in fifty thousand is still damn good odds. I'm sure there will be more such cases. As other folks here are pointing out, sometimes that's just how it goes, even for somebody who "should" be in no danger. Sometimes 20-year-olds die of the flu. But you still don't help yourself by getting into a tailspin over it. If you're sick, that just depletes your energy and makes it harder to take care of yourself so you can get better. If you're not, the same stress weakens your immune system and makes it harder to stay well.
- jamesrcole 7y ago
  > this is the first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease It may be the first one that’s been in the news here, but what about in China? I’m wondering if there have been any cases there, that haven't been officially reported in the news. The whistleblower doctor who died was only 34. I don't know if he had any prexisting conditions. https://nypost.com/2020/02/09/coronavirus-doctor-li-wenliangs-mother-demands-answers-after-his-death/ https://nypost.com/2020/02/09/coronavirus-doctor-li-wenliang...
evbpcapfxy 7y ago
Some quick googling also shows that young people without pre-existing conditions can die from the regular flu. https://time.com/5099042/influenza-deaths-flu/ https://time.com/5099042/influenza-deaths-flu/
- jamesrcole 7y ago
  But I don’t think people have been hammered with the view that flu can only kill older people. Whereas they have been for covid-19.
  - teekert 7y ago
    We have a sort of famous person in the Netherlands of 39y/o, he vlogged from his bed on a breather about his past 8 days of almost dying. That did a lot for awareness in my country I feel.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    People haven't been hammered with it because it's background cultural knowledge that's never really questioned. I've never met anyone below the age of 60 who acted even a tiny bit scared of the flu, except for a few people who've personally had a severe case before and parents with very young children.
doitLP 7y ago
No known pre-existing conditions != no pre-existing conditions. Besides in a large enough dataset this isn't surprising.
- nicky0 7y ago
  But how many people know they have no pre-existing conditions? Most of us are in the no known conditions camp.
kingkawn 7y ago
This type of Virus can cause respiratory failure by infecting the central nervous system even without infecting the lungs significantly. Latest interesting theory I’ve seen is that cases like this young woman (if truly otherwise healthy) could be because of this CNS disruption. https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/15/7264 https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/15/7264
sunseb 7y ago
It seems the Spanish flu first targeted old people, and almost disappeared during summer, before returning during fall and targeting young people. I hope it won't be like that this time.
devy 7y ago
There was a 18-year-old died in L.A. appeared to be youngest death due to COVID-19 in the U.S. so far. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/los-angeles-health-officials-say-a-child-under-18-has-died-from-the-coronavirus.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/los-angeles-health-officials...
bionhoward 7y ago
Biased as an immunologist, but this sounds like HLA type differences. The cells chop the virus proteins and stick them out using MHC1 to notify the immune system. This response is partly determined by genetics (HLA TYPE) and if we cluster outcomes vs HLA types we could learn a model to predict who’s gonna have worse outcomes. Could help with triage if it were a decision tree model
- nullc 7y ago
  Somewhat distantly related, have you seen https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fjzjpc/relationship_between_the_abo_blood_group_and_the/flct9wh/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fjzjpc/relationshi... ? (also see the old sars paper my comment cites and the surrounding thread)
- lgleason 7y ago
  It could also inform people to help them make decisions. IE: if they are more at risk they take more precautions and vise-versa.
davesque 7y ago
Seems relevant (from 2017): https://people.com/health/20-year-old-mother-dies-after-flu-diagnosis/ https://people.com/health/20-year-old-mother-dies-after-flu-...
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werber 7y ago
I hope these kinds of articles go viral. I know too many people about that age that aren't isolating and distancing. I don't care that it's sensational if it saves some lives
superkuh 7y ago
This is a very rare (in terms of percent) outlier for now. But as the first big wave comes and health care systems are overloaded this will become normal. Even as young people's lives are saved by triaging and letting old people die. Hospitalization is required in almost 30% of cases of 20-54 year olds and 5% of that is critical. If it takes abusing the properties of huge numbers to get younger people to wake up then do it. Because pretty soon this isn't going to be rare.
T-A 7y ago
Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the WHO's Director General, in [1]: One of the things that terrifies me now is, as this is spread in the west is, there’s this sense of invulnerability among millennials. And absolutely not. Ten percent of the people who are in [intensive care units] in Italy are in their 20s, 30s or 40s. These are young, healthy people with no co-morbidities, no other diseases. We don’t understand why some young healthy people progress to severe disease and even die and others don’t. We don’t have clear predictors. [1] https://time.com/5805368/will-coronavirus-go-away-world-health-organization/ https://time.com/5805368/will-coronavirus-go-away-world-heal...
- casefields 7y ago
  On what planet is someone in their late 30s-40s considered young? 40s is prime midlife crisis age for crying out loud. Lumping them in is a clear attempt to push a narrative.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
cavisne 7y ago
The source for no pre existing conditions is her aunt, this is not ideal and obviously no one can contradict her without violating privacy.
greendestiny_re 7y ago
Anecdotal data reliable? One case says "yes!"
dogma1138 7y ago
Without a proper PM it’s hard to know, when a 20 something footballer died in Italy it was initially without pre-existing conditions then some results came back and they found he had a undiagnosed leukemia. However even without pre-existing conditions there is still a non-zero chance of complications that could result in a fatality regardless of how low the chances are. This both means that people shouldn’t be careless but it also doesn’t mean that the news should abuse this to spread irrational fear. Comments like this: > "Clinicians who care for adults should be aware that COVID-19 can result in severe disease among persons of all ages," said the report, published on 18 March. Serve little to no clinical value, clinicians understand very well that there is always a chance; however it is quite clear that currently the likelihood of younger patients to die is still extremely slim compared to the current high risk groups which includes pretty much anyone over 60. The number of deaths in the 18-24 group specifically is still a rounding error.

103 points by rwol 7y ago

Her aunt is the one claiming she had no pre-existing conditions. I'd like to see a statement from a medical professional and an autopsy

tallanvor 7y ago
Yeah. No known preexisting conditions is very different from no preexisting conditions. That being said, it's certainly possible that she was just unlucky and the virus hit her harder than normal for people her age, or she caught some other bug at the same time.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  It can happen I recall a student where I worked, broke his leg in an evening cricket match, he died before morning.
- ProstetnicJeltz 7y ago
  Also we need to remember what the relevant pre-existing conditions here are. I think most people are immediately thinking severe asthma, COPD, recent or current cancer treatment; and while all of those elevate your risk, they aren't the most common comorbidities. The key co-morbidities are high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Only heart disease seems obvious - high blood pressure is almost standard, and diabetes is often managed well to the point of invisibility. The cardiac link appears interesting. Patients who are given ECMO, a complete lung bypass alternative to ventilators, have still died after their lungs recovered.
- 8fingerlouie 7y ago
  She could have a specific mutation in her DNA that protects against other things, that somehow makes COVID-19 worse. Like the CCR5-Delta32 mutation makes 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050325234239.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050325234239.h...). There are other mutations that appears to combat virus more effectively, but who's to say that there are not mutations that are beneficial for some disease, but catastrophic for others ?
- throwqwerty 7y ago
  >No known preexisting conditions is very different from no preexisting conditions. but you can easily have regular checkups and still have an undiscovered (unknown) pre-existing condition. so what is the difference?
- zuminator 7y ago
  But assuming this person had an unknown pre-existing condition is no comfort at all. It just means that anyone could equally have an unknown pre-existing condition that would similarly render then susceptible.
- lopis 7y ago
  The thing is how do you know you don't have any commodities. Specially if you're in your 20s lots of congenital defects might have not had the chance to be a problem.

ekvilibrist 7y ago

Smoking? Vaping? From what I've heard about other cases its highly unlikely but not impossible to die from Covid-19 if otherwise young and healthy...

sjg007 7y ago
Occam's razor: what you've heard is simply incorrect.
- dreary_dugong 7y ago
  I'd argue that Occam's razor would state that this article is inaccurate rather than the plethora of sources about age and pre-existing conditions.
  - klyrs 7y ago
    I'd argue that this is a single datapoint out of nearly 20k deaths. Are the odds of dying young with zero pre-existing conditions on the order of 1:20k, or exactly zero? Is death from covid rare or impossible?
    - derision 7y ago
      Most of what I've seen so far seems to suggest it works more like AIDs, where it weakens something (in this case, epithelial cells in the lungs) which allows other opportunistic issues to arise (bacterial pneumonia for example). So rather than dying "from the virus", you die from another underlying issue. Similar to how AIDs doesn't kill you, it just makes it easier for everything else to kill you
      - klyrs 7y ago
        We have a choice here: strongly hold onto generalizations derived from early analysis, or keep an open mind about new developments in the rapidly growing data. By all means folks should scrutinize these developments as they arrived, but we should keep Dunning-Kreuger in mind: there's a whole lot we don't know about this virus.

jhayward 7y ago

I'm puzzled by the intense focus on whether someone who dies had a pre-existing condition. It's like people want to convict the person for their own death, make it look like they were irresponsible, as a denial mechanism. By blaming the person for succumbing to the virus they can fall in to the US-centric mindset of blaming people for their own disfortune, poverty, illness, accident, lack of whiteness, etc. It's really stupid, unless you are a physician treating cases, to focus this way. It keeps us from dealing with the reality of the pandemic. Edit: for those objecting to my observation, see the responses linked below, which were the only ones present when I replied. I've seen this pattern often enough over the last few days to realize that it's not simply people seeking information about the nature of the disease, it is something else, more reactionary and emotional. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684817

adamc 7y ago
Trying to understand the risk factors is not blame.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
Huh? It's well documented by now that comorbidities increase the risk of death from COVID considerably. Articles like this make the news because they're fighting the myth that the young and healthy cannot die from it.
- jhayward 7y ago
  > Articles like this make the news because they're fighting the myth that the young and healthy cannot die from it. Yes, but look at the comments from when I made mine: they were all of the nature of "I bet they had some other problem". Once you've seen this reaction enough it begins to look less like information-seeking and more like denial.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

throw1234651234 7y ago

There is also that whole getting no food, no sleep, and otherwise compromising your immune system thing.

rob74 7y ago
On the other hand, there is evidence that some of the patients die due to an excessive response of the immune systen: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21176783/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-china-treatment-cytokine-storm-syndrome https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21176783/coronavirus-covid-19-...

chrisseaton 7y ago

> this so-called virus It is a virus, isn't it?

swsieber 7y ago
The pedant in me says technically the name of the virus "SARS-CoV-2" but lots of people are referring to the virus by the disease name of "COVID-19". Maybe that's why? The pragmatic side of me says "Yeah, what the heck. It's clearly known" Edit: Rereading it, the quote is directed at people who are skeptical of it's existence. So it makes sense in context.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Ah it's like HIV and AIDS, isn't it? SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19, and COVID-19 is not the virus but the disease. She's right.
  - GuiA 7y ago
    Easy mnemonic: COVID-19 stands for COrona VIrus Disease 2019.
    - dhimes 7y ago
      No kidding? I've been remembering it as COrona Virus Infectious Disease 2019. I haven't seen a source on this though- just made sense since CoV was established early in the timeline as corona virus.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      Yes, it's very easy to remember that the disease is named by the virus, and the virus is named by the disease :) I still wonder who got that brilliant idea.
  - dhimes 7y ago
    Yes. It took a while for WHO to name it. They didn't want to call it SARS because it was too frightening- SARS caused a lot of devastation in Asia. From the WHO website Q and A [1]: Is COVID-19 the same as SARS? No. The virus that causes COVID-19 and the one that caused the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 are related to each other genetically, but the diseases they cause are quite different. SARS was more deadly but much less infectious than COVID-19. There have been no outbreaks of SARS anywhere in the world since 2003. [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses I went to the WHO website to document my first assertion, that they chose the name to not cause fear and confusion with SARS, but didn't find it. It used to be right on the front page explaining the virus- they also explained the name.

sonicggg 7y ago

It seems that anecdotal evidence of young people dying of COVID-19 is the trend of the moment. Not sure if it's just cheap clickbait or the goal is to make younger generations to actually care about social distancing. The deal is that we are dealing with the power of large numbers. You can cherry-pick whatever case you want to fit your narrative. It does not mean its relevant information.

spyspy 7y ago
Anecdotally, my parents keep bringing up this narrative every time we talk on the phone. I've reminded them that while me and my fiance dutifully haven't left the house since last Sunday they've happily gone to the grocery store multiple times, attended a funeral, and had wine at their neighbor's house. They also refused to stop babysitting my niece and nephew until I called my brother and convinced him to stop dropping them off. But no, young people are the reckless ones.
- corpMaverick 7y ago
  As a parent of a young man. I understand why your parents have these fears. They know what they are doing, but they don´t know what you are doing other than what you tell them. Even if they trust you, this is a deeper fear. You could start lecturing your parents about how dangerous this is, so they are convinced that you are taking it seriously.
  - beat 7y ago
    As the parent of adult children currently living at home... one of ours keeps going out to be with friends. I understand she needs to get out of the house sometimes, but it's unnerving, knowing the points of contact (she often goes to her boyfriend's house, with his five currently-unemployed roommates). Then again, she works in a children's health clinic. I know what vector is probably going to bring COVID into our house.
    - SamBam 7y ago
      I would really hope that someone working in a health clinic would be more careful than that. Going over to other people's houses is exactly what people are not supposed to be doing. From my observations, the people who are most flippant about this seem to be boomers and young adults 20-25. I still see groups of young adults on the sidewalks, clearly not roommates, even though our state is in lockdown, and we're right next to a state that's starting to overwhelm their hospitals because of this kind of behavior.

throwanem 7y ago

It's easy to find an article like this very frightening, if you're young and healthy and have been thinking there's thus no chance you'll die of COVID-19 if (more likely when, tbh) you get it. I already have it, so I totally understand that. But this is the first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease, and we're over a hundred thousand confirmed cases in. Even assuming the current understanding is accurate, and this person didn't have some undiagnosed comorbidity, that's on the order of a .001% chance of dying. For a pandemic disease, those are very good odds. Yes, it's frightening, and in frightening times. But it's important to keep a sense of perspective. After all, stressing out over this can only weaken your defenses.

Symbiote 7y ago
A 13 year old died in Panama on Monday, but again, no confirmation on her health from a doctor. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/panama-13-year-girl-coronavirus-dies-officials-200323193144873.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/panama-13-year-girl-c...
- throwanem 7y ago
  One in fifty thousand is still damn good odds. I'm sure there will be more such cases. As other folks here are pointing out, sometimes that's just how it goes, even for somebody who "should" be in no danger. Sometimes 20-year-olds die of the flu. But you still don't help yourself by getting into a tailspin over it. If you're sick, that just depletes your energy and makes it harder to take care of yourself so you can get better. If you're not, the same stress weakens your immune system and makes it harder to stay well.
jamesrcole 7y ago
> this is the first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease It may be the first one that’s been in the news here, but what about in China? I’m wondering if there have been any cases there, that haven't been officially reported in the news. The whistleblower doctor who died was only 34. I don't know if he had any prexisting conditions. https://nypost.com/2020/02/09/coronavirus-doctor-li-wenliangs-mother-demands-answers-after-his-death/ https://nypost.com/2020/02/09/coronavirus-doctor-li-wenliang...

evbpcapfxy 7y ago

Some quick googling also shows that young people without pre-existing conditions can die from the regular flu. https://time.com/5099042/influenza-deaths-flu/ https://time.com/5099042/influenza-deaths-flu/

jamesrcole 7y ago
But I don’t think people have been hammered with the view that flu can only kill older people. Whereas they have been for covid-19.
- teekert 7y ago
  We have a sort of famous person in the Netherlands of 39y/o, he vlogged from his bed on a breather about his past 8 days of almost dying. That did a lot for awareness in my country I feel.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  People haven't been hammered with it because it's background cultural knowledge that's never really questioned. I've never met anyone below the age of 60 who acted even a tiny bit scared of the flu, except for a few people who've personally had a severe case before and parents with very young children.

doitLP 7y ago

No known pre-existing conditions != no pre-existing conditions. Besides in a large enough dataset this isn't surprising.

nicky0 7y ago
But how many people know they have no pre-existing conditions? Most of us are in the no known conditions camp.

kingkawn 7y ago

This type of Virus can cause respiratory failure by infecting the central nervous system even without infecting the lungs significantly. Latest interesting theory I’ve seen is that cases like this young woman (if truly otherwise healthy) could be because of this CNS disruption. https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/15/7264 https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/15/7264

sunseb 7y ago

It seems the Spanish flu first targeted old people, and almost disappeared during summer, before returning during fall and targeting young people. I hope it won't be like that this time.

devy 7y ago

There was a 18-year-old died in L.A. appeared to be youngest death due to COVID-19 in the U.S. so far. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/los-angeles-health-officials-say-a-child-under-18-has-died-from-the-coronavirus.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/los-angeles-health-officials...

bionhoward 7y ago

Biased as an immunologist, but this sounds like HLA type differences. The cells chop the virus proteins and stick them out using MHC1 to notify the immune system. This response is partly determined by genetics (HLA TYPE) and if we cluster outcomes vs HLA types we could learn a model to predict who’s gonna have worse outcomes. Could help with triage if it were a decision tree model

nullc 7y ago
Somewhat distantly related, have you seen https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fjzjpc/relationship_between_the_abo_blood_group_and_the/flct9wh/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fjzjpc/relationshi... ? (also see the old sars paper my comment cites and the surrounding thread)
lgleason 7y ago
It could also inform people to help them make decisions. IE: if they are more at risk they take more precautions and vise-versa.

davesque 7y ago

Seems relevant (from 2017): https://people.com/health/20-year-old-mother-dies-after-flu-diagnosis/ https://people.com/health/20-year-old-mother-dies-after-flu-...

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werber 7y ago

I hope these kinds of articles go viral. I know too many people about that age that aren't isolating and distancing. I don't care that it's sensational if it saves some lives

superkuh 7y ago

This is a very rare (in terms of percent) outlier for now. But as the first big wave comes and health care systems are overloaded this will become normal. Even as young people's lives are saved by triaging and letting old people die. Hospitalization is required in almost 30% of cases of 20-54 year olds and 5% of that is critical. If it takes abusing the properties of huge numbers to get younger people to wake up then do it. Because pretty soon this isn't going to be rare.

T-A 7y ago

Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the WHO's Director General, in [1]: One of the things that terrifies me now is, as this is spread in the west is, there’s this sense of invulnerability among millennials. And absolutely not. Ten percent of the people who are in [intensive care units] in Italy are in their 20s, 30s or 40s. These are young, healthy people with no co-morbidities, no other diseases. We don’t understand why some young healthy people progress to severe disease and even die and others don’t. We don’t have clear predictors. [1] https://time.com/5805368/will-coronavirus-go-away-world-health-organization/ https://time.com/5805368/will-coronavirus-go-away-world-heal...

casefields 7y ago
On what planet is someone in their late 30s-40s considered young? 40s is prime midlife crisis age for crying out loud. Lumping them in is a clear attempt to push a narrative.
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cavisne 7y ago

The source for no pre existing conditions is her aunt, this is not ideal and obviously no one can contradict her without violating privacy.

greendestiny_re 7y ago

Anecdotal data reliable? One case says "yes!"

dogma1138 7y ago

Without a proper PM it’s hard to know, when a 20 something footballer died in Italy it was initially without pre-existing conditions then some results came back and they found he had a undiagnosed leukemia. However even without pre-existing conditions there is still a non-zero chance of complications that could result in a fatality regardless of how low the chances are. This both means that people shouldn’t be careless but it also doesn’t mean that the news should abuse this to spread irrational fear. Comments like this: > "Clinicians who care for adults should be aware that COVID-19 can result in severe disease among persons of all ages," said the report, published on 18 March. Serve little to no clinical value, clinicians understand very well that there is always a chance; however it is quite clear that currently the likelihood of younger patients to die is still extremely slim compared to the current high risk groups which includes pretty much anyone over 60. The number of deaths in the 18-24 group specifically is still a rounding error.