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Here's another recent meta-study (preprint) on the same topic: Assessing the Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Systematic Review, Meta-A

by morsch 6y ago

Here's another recent meta-study (preprint) on the same topic: Assessing the Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Public Policy Implications https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v5.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v... Abstract: This paper assesses the age specificity of the infection fatality rate (IFR) for COVID-19 using results from 29 seroprevalence studies as well as five countries that have engaged in comprehensive tracing of COVID-19 cases. The estimated IFR is close to zero for children and younger adults but rises exponentially with age, reaching 0.4% at age 55, 1.4% at age 65, 4.6% at age 75, and 15% at age 85. We find that differences in the age structure of the population and the age-specific prevalence of COVID-19 explain nearly 90% of the geographical variation in population IFR. Consequently, protecting vulnerable age groups could substantially reduce the incidence of mortality. I think those results are in the same ballpark as what Ioannidis calculates. This isn't good news, really, not for middle-aged-adults anyway. IFR(age) = 0.1 x 10^((age-82)/20)

rndgermandude 6y ago
>This isn't good news, really, not for middle-aged-adults anyway. Or for anybody who knows middle aged and older people, especially if you spend time with them. I am honestly more concerned about killing my parents than dying myself of covid-19. This is why I skipped my mom's birthday for example, because I had pretty mild cold-like symptoms... or maybe mild covid-19.
- nradov 6y ago
  That was always a risk even before COVID-19. Regular seasonal influenza can be deadly, especially to the elderly. Patients can transmit it to others when they are asymptomatic or presymptomatic. COVID-19 has a longer incubation period and a significantly higher fatality rate but the same fundamentals still apply. Any of us could have inadvertently killed someone by giving them the flu without even realizing it.
  - ianlevesque 6y ago
    Thankfully the flu has an effective enough vaccine.
    - nradov 6y ago
      Effective enough for what? In some recent years seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness was as low as 19%. That's still much better than nothing and I encourage everyone to get vaccinated, but let's be realistic about the level of protection. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates...
  - DangerousPie 6y ago
    Flu is about 1/10 as deadly as coronavirus. And there’s a vaccine.
    - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
      This is a debunked claim that arose from conflating IFR vs CFR. Please source your claim. In terms of overall IFR Influenza and COVID-19 appear to be comparable. Influenza kills at least an order of magnitude more children, and for those in between roughly 35-55 they both kill about the same, and for the very elderly COVID-19 is multiple times more deadly. The overall IFRs are very comprable except COVID-19 preferentially kills the very old. This also means when you calculate YLL (years of life lost) Influenza takes more life-years away. I’d say at most if you take a .1% IFR of Influenza then COVID-19 is about 3x as deadly. Note however that we fundamentally classify Influenza deaths differently than with COVID-19. Almost any country considers any PCR-positive person who dies to be a COVID-19 death regardless of whether it’s a baby born with intestines outside of its body, or a young man in Orange County who died in a motorcycle accident, or George Floyd. All 3 of those examples I gave are real individuals who were PCR-positive at time of death. I know for a fact that the first two were initially labelled COVID-19 deaths, not sure about Floyd. There’s a concept I call the pathological vs physiologixal distinction that is crucial to understand and has been totally violated with COVID—19. The short of it is that it is a mistake to confuse a virus with a disease. (This is also why the phrase “asymptomatic COVID-19” is an oxymoron; if you have no symptoms you have a virus but not a disease) I have acne; if you culture my skin you will find the bacteria C. Acnes, which is naively believed to “cause” acne. Yet if you culture the skin of a healthy individual without acne, they also have C. Acnes. The question then is what combination of factors leads C Acnes to be pathogenic in one case (me) and not for another. The answer like most things is complicated, some combination of lipid peroxidation compromising the skin barrier, genetic skin turnover rates, etc, but most pop-sci articles will simplify it to “bacteria cause acne”. Similarly, it is a mistake to assume that if someone dies and has a positive SARS-2 PCR test that they died of COVID. First of all due to egregiously absurd cycle thresholds, you stay PCR-positive months after infection (again, see George Floyd’s hennepin county autopsy, he “had COVID” despite having recovered from it over a month prior to his death). But more importantly even if you truly have active, replicating SARS-2 in you at time of death, you didn’t necessarily die from COVID. I really got off on a tangent there but to wrap up, even if you take the official COVID-19 numbers - which I believe are grossly inflated - at most COVID-19 is 3x as lethal. To say it is an order of magnitude more deadly means you’re still stuck in April. It’s October now, please follow the new developments in the field. There was actually a paper released recently that traces the origins of the 10x deadly meme, debunked it and attributed its genesis to conflating CFR vs IFR. I’m on mobile travelling now without my laptop so I don’t have my megalist of research articles at my fingertips but if you search around maybe you can find it.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  BTW, for those substantially younger than dirt. You may be wondering why your elder elders aren’t particularly frightened by this, but folks 40 to 60 are more sensitized. After a certain age momento mori, a reminder that you will die, start coming at you fast and furious. This is just one more. They probably care more about seeing you than this next scheduled flight to Heaven. What unique about the shutdowns and social isolation, for the 40s-60s, are this is a momento senesci (if I have the Latin right). It’s a reminder that they will mostly likely enter a stage in life called old age, the slo-go/no-go stage of old age. A time when there will be fewer friends to visit, or the logistics become too difficult. A time when they will stay at home much more, and wouldn’t it be nice to have a comfortable home to be in. A time when that next flu won’t be so easy to shake, so maybe they skip that concert. The grim reaper isn’t knocking at the door, but rather an older, frailer version of themselves. These shutdowns and social distancing are a disconcerting trial run. My take on things...
  - joe_the_user 6y ago
    That older people aren't frightened by this seems like a gross generalization. Plenty of the people disturbed by the rather poor and haphazard against Covid are older people who feel personally threatened. Everyone experiences aging but in this highly individualized culture, how one interprets the experience is also individualized - varying from welcoming to acceptance to various fitness/health measures aimed to stave it off - plus there's denial and anger. Someone looking forward to enjoying old age might not want life to end in middle age, etc...
  - agapon 6y ago
    I think it's "memento" not "momento".
petertodd 6y ago
> > reaching 0.4% at age 55 > This isn't good news, really, not for middle-aged-adults anyway. Overall mortality at age 55 is about 0.5%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age-and-sex-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age... In general, COVID-19's IFR by age is pretty close to overall mortality. So even in unrestricted spread, limited by only herd immunity, at worst direct deaths from it would less than double your chances of dying in a year.
- seanbecker 6y ago
  > less than double your chances of dying in a year. The way this is phrased makes it sound like it's not a big deal. Doubling every individual's chance of dying within an entire generation is not something we should say lightly. Imagine if the base fatality rate was 50% rather than .5%.
  - christophilus 6y ago
    Double 0.5% is 1%. Where'd you get 50%?
    - csnover 6y ago
      I believe the parent was making a rhetorical point: if your base fatality rate were 50%, then doubling it would mean you’d be guaranteed to die. Therefore, saying something “only” doubles your risk of death can understate the impact of what that doubling means in practice.
      - petertodd 6y ago
        It's pretty simple: at my age randomly dying isn't something I'm concerned about at all. So doubling those chances is still not something I'm concerned about. It's certainly not an existential threat to society.
  - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    Maybe I’m crazy, but I view doubling a chance of dying in a year, and then returning to normal mortality for the next year, as far preferable to mass business closures, suspension of civil liberties, pulling kids out of school without evidence, mandating everyone wear masks, etc. I guess I never realized how risk averse people apparently are. I imagine these same people never drive a car since those things are deathtraps by comparisons.
jeffbee 6y ago
Bt it's great news for people who want some turnover in the US Senate.
ImaCake 6y ago
Your linked study is much better than Ionnadis' one! This one actually followed the proper protocol for a meta-analysis for one. The results here are better stratified, the data more solid (because they did their meta-analysis properly), and the justifications better. For those not familiar with biostatistics and meta-analysis. There is a standard and well defined pathway for doing a meta-analysis. It exists for a reason. Namely that it is really easy to misinterpret the results of aggregated studies if you do it wrong. The fact that the Ionnadis' article does not follow these procedures is enough to disregard it and instead focus on understand the studies that have done proper meta-analysis.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

by morsch 6y ago

rndgermandude 6y ago

>This isn't good news, really, not for middle-aged-adults anyway. Or for anybody who knows middle aged and older people, especially if you spend time with them. I am honestly more concerned about killing my parents than dying myself of covid-19. This is why I skipped my mom's birthday for example, because I had pretty mild cold-like symptoms... or maybe mild covid-19.

nradov 6y ago
That was always a risk even before COVID-19. Regular seasonal influenza can be deadly, especially to the elderly. Patients can transmit it to others when they are asymptomatic or presymptomatic. COVID-19 has a longer incubation period and a significantly higher fatality rate but the same fundamentals still apply. Any of us could have inadvertently killed someone by giving them the flu without even realizing it.
- ianlevesque 6y ago
  Thankfully the flu has an effective enough vaccine.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Effective enough for what? In some recent years seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness was as low as 19%. That's still much better than nothing and I encourage everyone to get vaccinated, but let's be realistic about the level of protection. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates...
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  Flu is about 1/10 as deadly as coronavirus. And there’s a vaccine.
  - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    This is a debunked claim that arose from conflating IFR vs CFR. Please source your claim. In terms of overall IFR Influenza and COVID-19 appear to be comparable. Influenza kills at least an order of magnitude more children, and for those in between roughly 35-55 they both kill about the same, and for the very elderly COVID-19 is multiple times more deadly. The overall IFRs are very comprable except COVID-19 preferentially kills the very old. This also means when you calculate YLL (years of life lost) Influenza takes more life-years away. I’d say at most if you take a .1% IFR of Influenza then COVID-19 is about 3x as deadly. Note however that we fundamentally classify Influenza deaths differently than with COVID-19. Almost any country considers any PCR-positive person who dies to be a COVID-19 death regardless of whether it’s a baby born with intestines outside of its body, or a young man in Orange County who died in a motorcycle accident, or George Floyd. All 3 of those examples I gave are real individuals who were PCR-positive at time of death. I know for a fact that the first two were initially labelled COVID-19 deaths, not sure about Floyd. There’s a concept I call the pathological vs physiologixal distinction that is crucial to understand and has been totally violated with COVID—19. The short of it is that it is a mistake to confuse a virus with a disease. (This is also why the phrase “asymptomatic COVID-19” is an oxymoron; if you have no symptoms you have a virus but not a disease) I have acne; if you culture my skin you will find the bacteria C. Acnes, which is naively believed to “cause” acne. Yet if you culture the skin of a healthy individual without acne, they also have C. Acnes. The question then is what combination of factors leads C Acnes to be pathogenic in one case (me) and not for another. The answer like most things is complicated, some combination of lipid peroxidation compromising the skin barrier, genetic skin turnover rates, etc, but most pop-sci articles will simplify it to “bacteria cause acne”. Similarly, it is a mistake to assume that if someone dies and has a positive SARS-2 PCR test that they died of COVID. First of all due to egregiously absurd cycle thresholds, you stay PCR-positive months after infection (again, see George Floyd’s hennepin county autopsy, he “had COVID” despite having recovered from it over a month prior to his death). But more importantly even if you truly have active, replicating SARS-2 in you at time of death, you didn’t necessarily die from COVID. I really got off on a tangent there but to wrap up, even if you take the official COVID-19 numbers - which I believe are grossly inflated - at most COVID-19 is 3x as lethal. To say it is an order of magnitude more deadly means you’re still stuck in April. It’s October now, please follow the new developments in the field. There was actually a paper released recently that traces the origins of the 10x deadly meme, debunked it and attributed its genesis to conflating CFR vs IFR. I’m on mobile travelling now without my laptop so I don’t have my megalist of research articles at my fingertips but if you search around maybe you can find it.
onecommentman 6y ago
BTW, for those substantially younger than dirt. You may be wondering why your elder elders aren’t particularly frightened by this, but folks 40 to 60 are more sensitized. After a certain age momento mori, a reminder that you will die, start coming at you fast and furious. This is just one more. They probably care more about seeing you than this next scheduled flight to Heaven. What unique about the shutdowns and social isolation, for the 40s-60s, are this is a momento senesci (if I have the Latin right). It’s a reminder that they will mostly likely enter a stage in life called old age, the slo-go/no-go stage of old age. A time when there will be fewer friends to visit, or the logistics become too difficult. A time when they will stay at home much more, and wouldn’t it be nice to have a comfortable home to be in. A time when that next flu won’t be so easy to shake, so maybe they skip that concert. The grim reaper isn’t knocking at the door, but rather an older, frailer version of themselves. These shutdowns and social distancing are a disconcerting trial run. My take on things...
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  That older people aren't frightened by this seems like a gross generalization. Plenty of the people disturbed by the rather poor and haphazard against Covid are older people who feel personally threatened. Everyone experiences aging but in this highly individualized culture, how one interprets the experience is also individualized - varying from welcoming to acceptance to various fitness/health measures aimed to stave it off - plus there's denial and anger. Someone looking forward to enjoying old age might not want life to end in middle age, etc...
- agapon 6y ago
  I think it's "memento" not "momento".

petertodd 6y ago

> > reaching 0.4% at age 55 > This isn't good news, really, not for middle-aged-adults anyway. Overall mortality at age 55 is about 0.5%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age-and-sex-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age... In general, COVID-19's IFR by age is pretty close to overall mortality. So even in unrestricted spread, limited by only herd immunity, at worst direct deaths from it would less than double your chances of dying in a year.

seanbecker 6y ago
> less than double your chances of dying in a year. The way this is phrased makes it sound like it's not a big deal. Doubling every individual's chance of dying within an entire generation is not something we should say lightly. Imagine if the base fatality rate was 50% rather than .5%.
- christophilus 6y ago
  Double 0.5% is 1%. Where'd you get 50%?
  - csnover 6y ago
    I believe the parent was making a rhetorical point: if your base fatality rate were 50%, then doubling it would mean you’d be guaranteed to die. Therefore, saying something “only” doubles your risk of death can understate the impact of what that doubling means in practice.
    - petertodd 6y ago
      It's pretty simple: at my age randomly dying isn't something I'm concerned about at all. So doubling those chances is still not something I'm concerned about. It's certainly not an existential threat to society.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  Maybe I’m crazy, but I view doubling a chance of dying in a year, and then returning to normal mortality for the next year, as far preferable to mass business closures, suspension of civil liberties, pulling kids out of school without evidence, mandating everyone wear masks, etc. I guess I never realized how risk averse people apparently are. I imagine these same people never drive a car since those things are deathtraps by comparisons.

jeffbee 6y ago

Bt it's great news for people who want some turnover in the US Senate.

ImaCake 6y ago

Your linked study is much better than Ionnadis' one! This one actually followed the proper protocol for a meta-analysis for one. The results here are better stratified, the data more solid (because they did their meta-analysis properly), and the justifications better. For those not familiar with biostatistics and meta-analysis. There is a standard and well defined pathway for doing a meta-analysis. It exists for a reason. Namely that it is really easy to misinterpret the results of aggregated studies if you do it wrong. The fact that the Ionnadis' article does not follow these procedures is enough to disregard it and instead focus on understand the studies that have done proper meta-analysis.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]