7 ms·

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 youn

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.
      - jwbwater 7y ago
        A healthcare worker I talked to had the opinion that she's getting exposed at work anyway so why not do what she wants outside of work.
        kian 7y ago
        shame that this healthcare worker apparently doesn't care for the other people she exposes. Perhaps the wrong profession?
    - JPKab 7y ago
      You're at really high risk in that living situation. Does she not have another place she can stay? I'm assuming she is aware of the risk to you? Never met you before, but as a fellow human being that situation sounds very high risk for you. I'm very glad that none of my dad's five kids boomeranged right now. I had to cancel visiting him. Terrible situation.
      - beat 7y ago
        She's back at home temporarily (broke up with a boyfriend that left her in a bad financial situation, moved back home to recuperate). She was planning to move out this summer and move in with friends who were buying a house, but buying a house may not be viable for them now due to a job at risk. Someone once gave me a definition of family... "If you have to go there, they have to let you in". On the flip side, I think we're all going to get exposed sooner or later, over the course of the next year or so. I'll just get exposed sooner than ideal. On the plus side, she may be moving entirely to work from home in the near future, as they'll be closing inpatient services at her clinic. On the minus side, her brother just got a job at a grocery store after losing his retail job at the mall (mall closed), so now he's probably an even worse vector than she is.
  - jetset15 7y ago
    Lecturing is a good idea, even more so if you rarely lecture your parents back, which I assume a lot of children don't. This is something I did to my parents and it changed the way they are approaching this pandemic. Social distancing is happening here now and they have respected my thoughts and ideas since they're scared and trust the information I'm supplying them is valuable.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Maybe they care more about your life than their own.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  Another anecdote to put on the pile: I spoke with my mother recently and we were lamenting how people were completely ignoring the "JUST STAY HOME" guidance. As the call was ending she mentioned how she was about to have her sisters and friends over for wine the next day. To which I replied that she was doing exactly what she was lamenting others doing. I think most people just assume they are the exception and can be trusted to do this correctly, when in fact the guidance is the way it is explicitly because that is not the case.
- VectorLock 7y ago
  I've been hearing "I rather die from Coronavirus than live my life in fear of it" from some at risk people who don't wish to isolate. Which I suppose is their decision. They'll unfortunately change their tack pretty fast when it becomes hard to breathe.
  - vardump 7y ago
    Unfortunately once infected, that risk-taker will infect others and accelerate disease growth rate. Infecting others who have no option to completely isolate or are just plain unlucky. Some of which will have possibly life-long lung damage. And some will die who would have otherwise survived. Responsible people isolate, because they don't want to harm or worse, kill others.
  - taylodl 7y ago
    It's not about living in fear. We're not quarantined because of fear. We're quarantined because of knowledge - we know how contagious this is, we know what the hospitalization rates are, we know our medical resources will be quickly depleted and we know how to slow the spread until we're better able to respond. The question we need to ask ourselves is why weren't we prepared?
    - ballenf 7y ago
      The fear is of the unknown chance that it will be serious for you or someone close to you. I think everyone is resigned to the fact that they'll get it eventually. Personally, I'm more in fear of having some non-coronavirus related emergency and not being to get good healthcare.
- abnry 7y ago
  Don't meet anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence.
newyankee 7y ago
True, but it is important to highlight that outliers exist. People should understand that better to err on the side of caution. Fear will only subside long time after fatigue creeps in, but before that no of cases should plateau.
save_ferris 7y ago
We’re also dealing with the fallout of living in a “post-truth” era, where we as a society can no longer agree with basic facts. Yes, it’s exceedingly rare to see a case like this, but what’s not rare is seeing the examples of people not taking this disease seriously, even some public officials. Getting people to cooperate with drastic disease mitigation efforts won’t happen if there’s a probability embedded in that headline. People are doing that in their heads already when they think “this can’t happen to me, so let’s all go to the beach today.”
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  But that mindset is exactly why we're in a post-truth era. If a news outlet's primary goal is convincing people to do the right thing rather than accurately communicating information, why should we trust that the information they communicate is accurate?
  - beepboopbeep 7y ago
    Doing the right thing and accurate information can be one in the same.
    - didgeoridoo 7y ago
      They can, or they cannot. The media lying about the effectiveness of masks for several weeks was “right” in that it probably allowed hospitals to refresh their stockpiles before mass panic buying set in. But it was a lie nonetheless. Same with the “coronavirus is a virus, Purell is useless because it is antibacterial” meme. The media is burning its credibility in favor of noble lies — but at the end, will it be worth it?
      - beepboopbeep 7y ago
        Yes, of course it's worth it. The media's credibility isn't a finite resource. It ebbs and flows like everything else in this world. Nothing is as binary as you see it.
jamesrcole 7y ago
Handfuls of cases are enough to discredit the belief (perhaps not common on HN, but common in many other places) that young people can’t get seriously ill or die from it.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Young people can die in a car crash, too, but that doesn't prevent most people from driving anyway. As long as it's only a small chance, nobody will pay it any mind and keep agreeing, that young people won't die from this. I mean, there are even cases of young people just randomly dying without any visible cause. Yes, not only the elderly can die just like that. No one really pays this any mind either.
  - dahart 7y ago
    There haven't been any common beliefs or narratives that young people couldn't die from driving or couldn't die without visible causes. On the contrary, the common narrative about driving is that young people are disproporionately dying due to inexperience and reckless behavior, and this narrative is true, more young people die in car crashes than old people. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teenagers https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teena... There have been reports that young people without other complications are not dying from coronavirus. That's why reports of someone young and healthy dying of COVID are getting attention, because it runs contrary to what has been widely reported.
smarri 7y ago
Alternatively it could be a material and relevant fact.
dahart 7y ago
It is relevant information when the previous narrative was that 0 young people had died of COVID, and that the “only” old people who had died had co-morbidity factors. BTW, this isn’t “anecdotal evidence”. This is an actual, verifiable data point.
- LanceH 7y ago
  Maybe doctor's and research scientists should present this as a data point instead of instead of yorkshirecoastradio relaying some facebook posts. While this narrative may fit what is perceived as a good cause, do we want it at the expense of truth? Do we want every story to first be questioned, "what are they trying to get us to do by telling us this?"
  - dahart 7y ago
    > do we want it at the expense of truth? I’m confused by that, what do you mean? What here is untrue? What is the “truth” that should be reported here? Someone died of COVID, someone who was young and didn’t have other health factors, which is abnormal compared to what we’ve heard about nearly all other cases of COVID death so far. Nobody claimed this is somehow a huge number of cases, and I think it’s well understood - and not being challenged here — that old people and sick people have much, much higher risk factors for dying of Coronavirus. But isn’t it worth knowing that the risk distribution does not start at 70 years old, that it starts at 18 and goes up?
    - mbeex 7y ago
      > Someone died of COVID possibly > and didn’t have other health factors an aunt is saying so > who was young the only thing that can be regarded as certain
      - dahart 7y ago
        Have you put this level of skepticism on the news reports about old people dying? Those details will be proven true or untrue by more official sources, and probably today. My point was not that I know they're true, it's that they are facts that can be checked. But I have no specific reason to be more skeptical of this report than of any other COVID deaths I've read about, do you?
CathedralBorrow 7y ago
If anecdotes like these succeed in making people take the problem seriously, was it still irrelevant information?
- defertoreptar 7y ago
  It could mean people who would be going give blood or provide essential services at their job refuse to out of irrational fear.
asveikau 7y ago
People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong. And exactly as you say: if there is a large population of infected people, the absolute number of people who fit in these small percentage tragedies is actually large.
- lgleason 7y ago
  It may be inevitable either way. 100 years ago life expectancy was 46 years. Today it is well into the 70's. Before that, for most of human history that rate was much lower. Up until now, for the past 80 years (post antibiotics) the human race has been really lucky, but perhaps nature is deciding something different. I hope not, but I do wonder.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    It has been refuted already, that the life expectancy was this low, with the explanation for the error being given as stillbirths affecting the average. As far as I know, even 500 years ago it wouldn't have been that difficult to reach age 70 once you've survived your childhood.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    I'm not sure what that has to do with my observation that "small percentage" events do occur in small percentages, and that they do occur in large absolute numbers when multiplied by sufficiently large numbers. My point is we shouldn't be dismissive about it not going to happen to "us", because it will happen to nonzero amounts of "us", and that's kind of the point of the mathematical reasoning. But to your point: Someone else is disputing you on this, but I would say even that it's irrelevant what life expectancy was 100 years ago. Today in the present reality we are talking about mostly preventable death. I don't think we should be so arrogant to say that we can prevent misfortune all the time, but we're not talking about inevitability either. We have medical technology and progress for a reason.
- jen20 7y ago
  > People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong. This was proven by the response to the polls (especially the FiveThirtyEight one) in the 2016 presidential election, surely?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pelario 7y ago
On the other hand; the fact that such (very rare) cases exist is also revealing that there we are talking about actual large numbers.
- lgleason 7y ago
  In the US, 33,000 people a year die in car accidents. That is an actual large number. But statistically there are other factors that determine the likelihood that you will be in that accident and for most statistically it is a low number, or low enough to be considered an acceptable risk. Sure an individual story of a horrific crash, the pain and suffering is heart wrenching. News outlets love to play that up. Yes, it could also be you, but when you put it into a larger picture it tells a different story. Then there are the stories of airplane crashes. They get massive coverage yet, statistically, planes are safer than being in a car.
ramblerman 7y ago
Fear sells. This is tragic, but the exception to the rule. To add some weight to your argument, the official stats from italy offer clear data [1]: - 1.1% of deaths in Italy < 50 years old - No deaths < 30 - 99% with comorbidities, 75% with at least 2 comorbidities. [1] https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_20_marzo_eng.pdf https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...
- josh_fyi 7y ago
  I don't understand the 99% statistic. It is hard to imagine that any measurement, where errors and odd cases are inevitable, is almost exactly 100%
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    It sounds like you've understood it correctly. The data strongly suggests that COVID-19 isn't a deadly disease for otherwise healthy people, and any apparently healthy young people who die from it are most likely "errors and odd cases". (Although framing it that way could imply too strong of a conclusion - comorbidities in the study include hypertension and diabetes, which aren't exactly rare.)
    - danenania 7y ago
      The hospitalization rates for younger people in Italy and NYC don’t paint such a rosy picture though. While deaths are rare, it’s still a very nasty disease for many younger people, and we don’t have much data yet on potential long term effects.
      - thu2111 7y ago
        No, we don't, but what people are interested in here is the lockdowns and when they can end - totally or partly. The hospitalisations of young people all so far appear to be exceptional cases. This is also true of the reports of "fully healthy people". So far every case I'm aware of like that has turned out to be a lie. It implies the lockdowns could be restricted to the elderly and the frail. In one case in the UK a woman under 40 was admitted to ICU with no pre-existing health conditions. Worrying, right? She'd been taking 8 ibuprofen a day. Ibuprofen suppresses the immune system and 8 per day is a staggeringly high overdose. The maximum dose for an adult is 4 per day so she was killing her immune system completely. In another case there was a death of a young person in Spain, reported as no pre-existing conditions. After the death he was diagnosed with an unrecognised leukemia. It's very likely given how extreme the statistical evidence is that basically all such cases have some sort of mitigating factor. Young people who are healthy and not doing stupid things don't seem to die or even get critically ill.
pavon 7y ago
It is trying to counter misconceptions that COVID-19 is harmless to young healthy people based on misinterpretations of guidance that elderly and those with preexisting conditions are most at risk. Just because younger people are at less risk doesn't mean they have no risk. While the numbers have been hard to pin down, early data from China showed that more than 10% of people in their 20s-40s with the disease had critical cases. Some other studies outside China have put that number at 15-20%. The number of severe cases is much less, but not 0. With proper treatment nearly all of those critical cases will survive. But if the health care system becomes overwhelmed that may no longer be true. It is trying to sink in the idea that young people are not invincible to COVID-19 and that they need to practice social distancing, if not for the benefit of society as a whole, then for their own self benefit.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  I think I read that statistic differently - that of the critical cases, 10-14% were between 20 to 40. Not a per-capita number. Not a percentage of young people - a percentage of sick people. Folks in that wide age bracket are around 30% of the US total population. The old - 15%?
  - d1str0 7y ago
    That is a big and important distinction.
  - pavon 7y ago
    Statistics have been reported for both directions. Early US data[1] showed: * 20% of (COVID-19 patients hospitalized) were age 20-44 years. * 12% of (COVID-19 patients in ICU) were age 20-44 The same report also tallied result by age group, stating that: * 14-20% of (COVID-19 patients age 20-44) were hospitalized * 2-4% of (COVID-19 patients age 20-44) were in ICU Ranges due to not all data sources reporting hospitalization/ICU status. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm

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.
    - jwbwater 7y ago
      A healthcare worker I talked to had the opinion that she's getting exposed at work anyway so why not do what she wants outside of work.
      - kian 7y ago
        shame that this healthcare worker apparently doesn't care for the other people she exposes. Perhaps the wrong profession?
  - JPKab 7y ago
    You're at really high risk in that living situation. Does she not have another place she can stay? I'm assuming she is aware of the risk to you? Never met you before, but as a fellow human being that situation sounds very high risk for you. I'm very glad that none of my dad's five kids boomeranged right now. I had to cancel visiting him. Terrible situation.
    - beat 7y ago
      She's back at home temporarily (broke up with a boyfriend that left her in a bad financial situation, moved back home to recuperate). She was planning to move out this summer and move in with friends who were buying a house, but buying a house may not be viable for them now due to a job at risk. Someone once gave me a definition of family... "If you have to go there, they have to let you in". On the flip side, I think we're all going to get exposed sooner or later, over the course of the next year or so. I'll just get exposed sooner than ideal. On the plus side, she may be moving entirely to work from home in the near future, as they'll be closing inpatient services at her clinic. On the minus side, her brother just got a job at a grocery store after losing his retail job at the mall (mall closed), so now he's probably an even worse vector than she is.
- jetset15 7y ago
  Lecturing is a good idea, even more so if you rarely lecture your parents back, which I assume a lot of children don't. This is something I did to my parents and it changed the way they are approaching this pandemic. Social distancing is happening here now and they have respected my thoughts and ideas since they're scared and trust the information I'm supplying them is valuable.
BurningFrog 7y ago
Maybe they care more about your life than their own.
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
Another anecdote to put on the pile: I spoke with my mother recently and we were lamenting how people were completely ignoring the "JUST STAY HOME" guidance. As the call was ending she mentioned how she was about to have her sisters and friends over for wine the next day. To which I replied that she was doing exactly what she was lamenting others doing. I think most people just assume they are the exception and can be trusted to do this correctly, when in fact the guidance is the way it is explicitly because that is not the case.
VectorLock 7y ago
I've been hearing "I rather die from Coronavirus than live my life in fear of it" from some at risk people who don't wish to isolate. Which I suppose is their decision. They'll unfortunately change their tack pretty fast when it becomes hard to breathe.
- vardump 7y ago
  Unfortunately once infected, that risk-taker will infect others and accelerate disease growth rate. Infecting others who have no option to completely isolate or are just plain unlucky. Some of which will have possibly life-long lung damage. And some will die who would have otherwise survived. Responsible people isolate, because they don't want to harm or worse, kill others.
- taylodl 7y ago
  It's not about living in fear. We're not quarantined because of fear. We're quarantined because of knowledge - we know how contagious this is, we know what the hospitalization rates are, we know our medical resources will be quickly depleted and we know how to slow the spread until we're better able to respond. The question we need to ask ourselves is why weren't we prepared?
  - ballenf 7y ago
    The fear is of the unknown chance that it will be serious for you or someone close to you. I think everyone is resigned to the fact that they'll get it eventually. Personally, I'm more in fear of having some non-coronavirus related emergency and not being to get good healthcare.
abnry 7y ago
Don't meet anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence.

newyankee 7y ago

True, but it is important to highlight that outliers exist. People should understand that better to err on the side of caution. Fear will only subside long time after fatigue creeps in, but before that no of cases should plateau.

save_ferris 7y ago

We’re also dealing with the fallout of living in a “post-truth” era, where we as a society can no longer agree with basic facts. Yes, it’s exceedingly rare to see a case like this, but what’s not rare is seeing the examples of people not taking this disease seriously, even some public officials. Getting people to cooperate with drastic disease mitigation efforts won’t happen if there’s a probability embedded in that headline. People are doing that in their heads already when they think “this can’t happen to me, so let’s all go to the beach today.”

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
But that mindset is exactly why we're in a post-truth era. If a news outlet's primary goal is convincing people to do the right thing rather than accurately communicating information, why should we trust that the information they communicate is accurate?
- beepboopbeep 7y ago
  Doing the right thing and accurate information can be one in the same.
  - didgeoridoo 7y ago
    They can, or they cannot. The media lying about the effectiveness of masks for several weeks was “right” in that it probably allowed hospitals to refresh their stockpiles before mass panic buying set in. But it was a lie nonetheless. Same with the “coronavirus is a virus, Purell is useless because it is antibacterial” meme. The media is burning its credibility in favor of noble lies — but at the end, will it be worth it?
    - beepboopbeep 7y ago
      Yes, of course it's worth it. The media's credibility isn't a finite resource. It ebbs and flows like everything else in this world. Nothing is as binary as you see it.

jamesrcole 7y ago

Handfuls of cases are enough to discredit the belief (perhaps not common on HN, but common in many other places) that young people can’t get seriously ill or die from it.

Kaiyou 7y ago
Young people can die in a car crash, too, but that doesn't prevent most people from driving anyway. As long as it's only a small chance, nobody will pay it any mind and keep agreeing, that young people won't die from this. I mean, there are even cases of young people just randomly dying without any visible cause. Yes, not only the elderly can die just like that. No one really pays this any mind either.
- dahart 7y ago
  There haven't been any common beliefs or narratives that young people couldn't die from driving or couldn't die without visible causes. On the contrary, the common narrative about driving is that young people are disproporionately dying due to inexperience and reckless behavior, and this narrative is true, more young people die in car crashes than old people. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teenagers https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teena... There have been reports that young people without other complications are not dying from coronavirus. That's why reports of someone young and healthy dying of COVID are getting attention, because it runs contrary to what has been widely reported.

smarri 7y ago

Alternatively it could be a material and relevant fact.

dahart 7y ago

It is relevant information when the previous narrative was that 0 young people had died of COVID, and that the “only” old people who had died had co-morbidity factors. BTW, this isn’t “anecdotal evidence”. This is an actual, verifiable data point.

LanceH 7y ago
Maybe doctor's and research scientists should present this as a data point instead of instead of yorkshirecoastradio relaying some facebook posts. While this narrative may fit what is perceived as a good cause, do we want it at the expense of truth? Do we want every story to first be questioned, "what are they trying to get us to do by telling us this?"
- dahart 7y ago
  > do we want it at the expense of truth? I’m confused by that, what do you mean? What here is untrue? What is the “truth” that should be reported here? Someone died of COVID, someone who was young and didn’t have other health factors, which is abnormal compared to what we’ve heard about nearly all other cases of COVID death so far. Nobody claimed this is somehow a huge number of cases, and I think it’s well understood - and not being challenged here — that old people and sick people have much, much higher risk factors for dying of Coronavirus. But isn’t it worth knowing that the risk distribution does not start at 70 years old, that it starts at 18 and goes up?
  - mbeex 7y ago
    > Someone died of COVID possibly > and didn’t have other health factors an aunt is saying so > who was young the only thing that can be regarded as certain
    - dahart 7y ago
      Have you put this level of skepticism on the news reports about old people dying? Those details will be proven true or untrue by more official sources, and probably today. My point was not that I know they're true, it's that they are facts that can be checked. But I have no specific reason to be more skeptical of this report than of any other COVID deaths I've read about, do you?

CathedralBorrow 7y ago

If anecdotes like these succeed in making people take the problem seriously, was it still irrelevant information?

defertoreptar 7y ago
It could mean people who would be going give blood or provide essential services at their job refuse to out of irrational fear.

asveikau 7y ago

People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong. And exactly as you say: if there is a large population of infected people, the absolute number of people who fit in these small percentage tragedies is actually large.

lgleason 7y ago
It may be inevitable either way. 100 years ago life expectancy was 46 years. Today it is well into the 70's. Before that, for most of human history that rate was much lower. Up until now, for the past 80 years (post antibiotics) the human race has been really lucky, but perhaps nature is deciding something different. I hope not, but I do wonder.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  It has been refuted already, that the life expectancy was this low, with the explanation for the error being given as stillbirths affecting the average. As far as I know, even 500 years ago it wouldn't have been that difficult to reach age 70 once you've survived your childhood.
- asveikau 7y ago
  I'm not sure what that has to do with my observation that "small percentage" events do occur in small percentages, and that they do occur in large absolute numbers when multiplied by sufficiently large numbers. My point is we shouldn't be dismissive about it not going to happen to "us", because it will happen to nonzero amounts of "us", and that's kind of the point of the mathematical reasoning. But to your point: Someone else is disputing you on this, but I would say even that it's irrelevant what life expectancy was 100 years ago. Today in the present reality we are talking about mostly preventable death. I don't think we should be so arrogant to say that we can prevent misfortune all the time, but we're not talking about inevitability either. We have medical technology and progress for a reason.
jen20 7y ago
> People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong. This was proven by the response to the polls (especially the FiveThirtyEight one) in the 2016 presidential election, surely?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pelario 7y ago

On the other hand; the fact that such (very rare) cases exist is also revealing that there we are talking about actual large numbers.

lgleason 7y ago
In the US, 33,000 people a year die in car accidents. That is an actual large number. But statistically there are other factors that determine the likelihood that you will be in that accident and for most statistically it is a low number, or low enough to be considered an acceptable risk. Sure an individual story of a horrific crash, the pain and suffering is heart wrenching. News outlets love to play that up. Yes, it could also be you, but when you put it into a larger picture it tells a different story. Then there are the stories of airplane crashes. They get massive coverage yet, statistically, planes are safer than being in a car.

ramblerman 7y ago

Fear sells. This is tragic, but the exception to the rule. To add some weight to your argument, the official stats from italy offer clear data [1]: - 1.1% of deaths in Italy < 50 years old - No deaths < 30 - 99% with comorbidities, 75% with at least 2 comorbidities. [1] https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_20_marzo_eng.pdf https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...

josh_fyi 7y ago
I don't understand the 99% statistic. It is hard to imagine that any measurement, where errors and odd cases are inevitable, is almost exactly 100%
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  It sounds like you've understood it correctly. The data strongly suggests that COVID-19 isn't a deadly disease for otherwise healthy people, and any apparently healthy young people who die from it are most likely "errors and odd cases". (Although framing it that way could imply too strong of a conclusion - comorbidities in the study include hypertension and diabetes, which aren't exactly rare.)
  - danenania 7y ago
    The hospitalization rates for younger people in Italy and NYC don’t paint such a rosy picture though. While deaths are rare, it’s still a very nasty disease for many younger people, and we don’t have much data yet on potential long term effects.
    - thu2111 7y ago
      No, we don't, but what people are interested in here is the lockdowns and when they can end - totally or partly. The hospitalisations of young people all so far appear to be exceptional cases. This is also true of the reports of "fully healthy people". So far every case I'm aware of like that has turned out to be a lie. It implies the lockdowns could be restricted to the elderly and the frail. In one case in the UK a woman under 40 was admitted to ICU with no pre-existing health conditions. Worrying, right? She'd been taking 8 ibuprofen a day. Ibuprofen suppresses the immune system and 8 per day is a staggeringly high overdose. The maximum dose for an adult is 4 per day so she was killing her immune system completely. In another case there was a death of a young person in Spain, reported as no pre-existing conditions. After the death he was diagnosed with an unrecognised leukemia. It's very likely given how extreme the statistical evidence is that basically all such cases have some sort of mitigating factor. Young people who are healthy and not doing stupid things don't seem to die or even get critically ill.

pavon 7y ago

It is trying to counter misconceptions that COVID-19 is harmless to young healthy people based on misinterpretations of guidance that elderly and those with preexisting conditions are most at risk. Just because younger people are at less risk doesn't mean they have no risk. While the numbers have been hard to pin down, early data from China showed that more than 10% of people in their 20s-40s with the disease had critical cases. Some other studies outside China have put that number at 15-20%. The number of severe cases is much less, but not 0. With proper treatment nearly all of those critical cases will survive. But if the health care system becomes overwhelmed that may no longer be true. It is trying to sink in the idea that young people are not invincible to COVID-19 and that they need to practice social distancing, if not for the benefit of society as a whole, then for their own self benefit.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
I think I read that statistic differently - that of the critical cases, 10-14% were between 20 to 40. Not a per-capita number. Not a percentage of young people - a percentage of sick people. Folks in that wide age bracket are around 30% of the US total population. The old - 15%?
- d1str0 7y ago
  That is a big and important distinction.
- pavon 7y ago
  Statistics have been reported for both directions. Early US data[1] showed: * 20% of (COVID-19 patients hospitalized) were age 20-44 years. * 12% of (COVID-19 patients in ICU) were age 20-44 The same report also tallied result by age group, stating that: * 14-20% of (COVID-19 patients age 20-44) were hospitalized * 2-4% of (COVID-19 patients age 20-44) were in ICU Ranges due to not all data sources reporting hospitalization/ICU status. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm