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It's not the death rate that's worrying for most age groups, it's the health effects. It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisat

It's not the death rate that's worrying for most age groups, it's the health effects. It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisation rates but early estimates from the Chinese data suggest it's 4.25% for people in their 40s[0]. If you get hospitalised (or even if you don't) you have a significant chance of long-term health problems. I don't know if that estimate has come down since we've not had to rely on filtered China data but a 1-in-20 chance of hospitalisation seems worrying enough for individuals and a huge problem for society if you let the virus get out of control. > or being affected by any long-term effects of the virus is about two magnitudes less than the risk for people who are 70+ What data are you basing this on? [0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

henrikschroder 6y ago
> It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisation rates Here's data for Sweden: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6... Total number of confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU, and 44 ended up dead. Since the number of actual cases is higher than the confirmed cases, the 2% hospitalization rate the above numbers result in is an upper bound. And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases, the hospitalization rate for people in their 40's is probably somewhere around 0.2%. That's 1-in-500, not 1-in-20. Note that these numbers completely ignore risk factors. There's also this page with data about risk factors for patients in Sweden: https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/ https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/ Scroll down to "riskgrupper", and you can see that for men between 40 and 59, 22% were diabetic, 31% suffered high blood pressure, and 11% had some kind of chronic lung disease, for example. So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups, the risk of you suffering long-term health problems from the virus is even lower than 1-in-500.
- chimprich 6y ago
  > confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU I can't understand the language (Swedish, presumably), but the ICU percentage is not the hospitalisation rate. Rather more people than need ICU are being hospitalised. If 2% are needing ICU treatment, 4.6% needing oxygen in hospital sounds plausible if not an underestimate. > And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now, and estimates of asymptomatic cases vary but seem to hover around 40%. > So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1.
  - henrikschroder 6y ago
    > Rather more people than need ICU are being hospitalised. True, but being in an ICU in Sweden also doesn't mean you're necessarily hooked up to a ventilator. You'll be hooked up to the machine that goes bing, and you'll probably be hooked up to oxygen. It's a pretty iffy proxy measurement for the amount of people who will suffer long-term health effects, but it's probably in the same ballpark. And we haven't quantified the severity of those health effects. For some it means getting winded more easily for up to a year after being sick, and for others it means having to amputate a limb because you developed a blood clot while in a ventilator coma. One of these is not like the other. >> And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases > That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now Ok, doing the numbers for July for Sweden which is when testing finally reached acceptable levels: 10487 new confirmed cases. 62 new ICU patients. Assuming the age distribution is the same as for the full period, people in their 40's make up 16.7% of the cases and 11.2% of the ICU patients. That's 1751 cases and 7 of the ICU patients, which results in a hospitalization rate of 0.4%. That's a lot closer to my estimates than yours. > Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1. Fair enough, and it's actually 3-1 for Sweden. Still, that doesn't bring the number anywhere near 1-in-20. 1-in-100, tops.

henrikschroder 6y ago

> It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisation rates Here's data for Sweden: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6... Total number of confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU, and 44 ended up dead. Since the number of actual cases is higher than the confirmed cases, the 2% hospitalization rate the above numbers result in is an upper bound. And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases, the hospitalization rate for people in their 40's is probably somewhere around 0.2%. That's 1-in-500, not 1-in-20. Note that these numbers completely ignore risk factors. There's also this page with data about risk factors for patients in Sweden: https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/ https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/ Scroll down to "riskgrupper", and you can see that for men between 40 and 59, 22% were diabetic, 31% suffered high blood pressure, and 11% had some kind of chronic lung disease, for example. So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups, the risk of you suffering long-term health problems from the virus is even lower than 1-in-500.

chimprich 6y ago
> confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU I can't understand the language (Swedish, presumably), but the ICU percentage is not the hospitalisation rate. Rather more people than need ICU are being hospitalised. If 2% are needing ICU treatment, 4.6% needing oxygen in hospital sounds plausible if not an underestimate. > And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now, and estimates of asymptomatic cases vary but seem to hover around 40%. > So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1.
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  > Rather more people than need ICU are being hospitalised. True, but being in an ICU in Sweden also doesn't mean you're necessarily hooked up to a ventilator. You'll be hooked up to the machine that goes bing, and you'll probably be hooked up to oxygen. It's a pretty iffy proxy measurement for the amount of people who will suffer long-term health effects, but it's probably in the same ballpark. And we haven't quantified the severity of those health effects. For some it means getting winded more easily for up to a year after being sick, and for others it means having to amputate a limb because you developed a blood clot while in a ventilator coma. One of these is not like the other. >> And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases > That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now Ok, doing the numbers for July for Sweden which is when testing finally reached acceptable levels: 10487 new confirmed cases. 62 new ICU patients. Assuming the age distribution is the same as for the full period, people in their 40's make up 16.7% of the cases and 11.2% of the ICU patients. That's 1751 cases and 7 of the ICU patients, which results in a hospitalization rate of 0.4%. That's a lot closer to my estimates than yours. > Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1. Fair enough, and it's actually 3-1 for Sweden. Still, that doesn't bring the number anywhere near 1-in-20. 1-in-100, tops.