3 ms·

> it's ~3.5 years https://www.pnas.org/content/117/36/22035 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/36/22035 > We calculate, using these same cohort life tables, tha

by rrss 6y ago

> it's ~3.5 years https://www.pnas.org/content/117/36/22035 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/36/22035 > We calculate, using these same cohort life tables, that the average person dying of COVID-19 had 11.7 y of remaining life expectancy

IncRnd 6y ago
That is taken out of context. The prior sentence pointed out, "we calculate that the 2020 American population of 330 million people has on average..." The calculation you reference was done using all people in the US. Just two sentences later they wrote, "... would on average lose about 0.2 y of remaining life ..." You need to compare to the groups of affected people, which is generally not 100% of people in the US.
- rrss 6y ago
  The calculation I reference is the average remaining lifespan for people who die of COVID-19. The additional context doesn't make any difference, it just provides two additional (different) calculations: average remaining lifespan across the entire population: > we calculate that the 2020 American population of 330 million people has on average 45.8 y of remaining life expectancy, totaling 14.9 billion person years. reduction in remaining lifespan in the 70-89 age group: > Older individuals ages 70 to 89 y, taking those who die and those who survive together, would on average lose about 0.2 y of remaining life, and younger individuals would lose far less. I did not include these calculations because they are not comparable to the number to which I was responding.
breck 6y ago
My figure is correct, the 11.7yr is wrong. It's a pretty good paper, but 2 major flaws that I think should be corrected. From the paper: > Both of the above calculations may overstate the loss of remaining life in that they assign the remaining life expectancy based only on age, without taking into account that COVID-19 deaths are disproportionately occurring among those with compromised health status. So their 11.7 average years remaining ignores the critical bit of information that we know this person died of COVID. It is extremely unlikely that if you took 2 80 year olds, one who died of COVID and one who did not, that if neither got COVID they would live to be the same age. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 10x difference. While they do mention this and add some caveats (a good thing), I think because it completely changes the conclusions of the paper, they should have gone with a range and not a 11.7 number, which seems very improbable. > Avoiding 1.75 million deaths or 20.5 trillion person years of life lost would be valued at $10.2 to $17.5 trillion Then they take the 11.7 figure from above and multiply it by the estimated average value of a year of life. Again, there is at least an order of magnitude difference between a year of life at age 90 and a year of life at age 30, for most people. Finally, although my ~3.5 number is much closer to the truth than 11.7, there is a difference between life expectancy and "healthy lifespan", aka "healthspan" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6136295/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6136295/). Healthspan is a newer concept but I expect will be the primary term in a decade or two. Thank you for providing the link, a good read.
- rrss 6y ago
  > I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 10x difference The next sentence: > Hanlon et al. (10) estimate that those dying from COVID-19 have only about 1 y less of remaining life on average than those at the same age in the general population, which would mean that the overstatement is not very large, around 8%. Your own link states that healthspan is not quantifiable, so your claim that it is 3.5y doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
  - breck 6y ago
    I saw Hanlon, and again a pretty good paper (http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/215598/1/215598.pdf http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/215598/1/215598.pdf), but far off. First, it came out in April, when CFR in the USA was 6.2%, not 1.9%. So that alone would be enough to drive YLL of fatalities down close to my number. > "used to construct a plausible scenario for the prevalence of combinations of LTCs among people who died from COVID-19 for the modelling presented here." Second, the dataset used at the time to generate their synthetic data was weak. You can see it immediately in their bar charts, where they have mostly healthy 50-69 y.o. dying in their synthetic data, skewing their YLL to the right. > Your own link states that healthspan is not quantifiable, so your claim that it is 3.5y doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I provided a link to a "conservative" description of healthspan, but in the field people are more optimistic about it. Very good questions you brought up though, thanks!

by rrss 6y ago

IncRnd 6y ago

That is taken out of context. The prior sentence pointed out, "we calculate that the 2020 American population of 330 million people has on average..." The calculation you reference was done using all people in the US. Just two sentences later they wrote, "... would on average lose about 0.2 y of remaining life ..." You need to compare to the groups of affected people, which is generally not 100% of people in the US.

rrss 6y ago
The calculation I reference is the average remaining lifespan for people who die of COVID-19. The additional context doesn't make any difference, it just provides two additional (different) calculations: average remaining lifespan across the entire population: > we calculate that the 2020 American population of 330 million people has on average 45.8 y of remaining life expectancy, totaling 14.9 billion person years. reduction in remaining lifespan in the 70-89 age group: > Older individuals ages 70 to 89 y, taking those who die and those who survive together, would on average lose about 0.2 y of remaining life, and younger individuals would lose far less. I did not include these calculations because they are not comparable to the number to which I was responding.

breck 6y ago

My figure is correct, the 11.7yr is wrong. It's a pretty good paper, but 2 major flaws that I think should be corrected. From the paper: > Both of the above calculations may overstate the loss of remaining life in that they assign the remaining life expectancy based only on age, without taking into account that COVID-19 deaths are disproportionately occurring among those with compromised health status. So their 11.7 average years remaining ignores the critical bit of information that we know this person died of COVID. It is extremely unlikely that if you took 2 80 year olds, one who died of COVID and one who did not, that if neither got COVID they would live to be the same age. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 10x difference. While they do mention this and add some caveats (a good thing), I think because it completely changes the conclusions of the paper, they should have gone with a range and not a 11.7 number, which seems very improbable. > Avoiding 1.75 million deaths or 20.5 trillion person years of life lost would be valued at $10.2 to $17.5 trillion Then they take the 11.7 figure from above and multiply it by the estimated average value of a year of life. Again, there is at least an order of magnitude difference between a year of life at age 90 and a year of life at age 30, for most people. Finally, although my ~3.5 number is much closer to the truth than 11.7, there is a difference between life expectancy and "healthy lifespan", aka "healthspan" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6136295/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6136295/). Healthspan is a newer concept but I expect will be the primary term in a decade or two. Thank you for providing the link, a good read.

rrss 6y ago
> I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 10x difference The next sentence: > Hanlon et al. (10) estimate that those dying from COVID-19 have only about 1 y less of remaining life on average than those at the same age in the general population, which would mean that the overstatement is not very large, around 8%. Your own link states that healthspan is not quantifiable, so your claim that it is 3.5y doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
- breck 6y ago
  I saw Hanlon, and again a pretty good paper (http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/215598/1/215598.pdf http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/215598/1/215598.pdf), but far off. First, it came out in April, when CFR in the USA was 6.2%, not 1.9%. So that alone would be enough to drive YLL of fatalities down close to my number. > "used to construct a plausible scenario for the prevalence of combinations of LTCs among people who died from COVID-19 for the modelling presented here." Second, the dataset used at the time to generate their synthetic data was weak. You can see it immediately in their bar charts, where they have mostly healthy 50-69 y.o. dying in their synthetic data, skewing their YLL to the right. > Your own link states that healthspan is not quantifiable, so your claim that it is 3.5y doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I provided a link to a "conservative" description of healthspan, but in the field people are more optimistic about it. Very good questions you brought up though, thanks!