10 ms·

I'm actually surprised it is not higher. For 40-64 year old in the US, the annual chance of death is about half a percent (before covid) so a 40% increase is s

I'm actually surprised it is not higher. For 40-64 year old in the US, the annual chance of death is about half a percent (before covid) so a 40% increase is still a very low mortality rate. https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data/deathrates/index.php?stateFIPS=00&cod=247&race=00&sex=0&age=122&year=0&type=death&sortVariableName=rate&sortOrder=default https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data/deathrates/index.php?stat...

deleted 5y ago
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jb1991 5y ago
I’m surprised it is as high as you claim! You’re saying that for that age group, in a given year, the chances are 1 in 200 of dying? That seems like pretty bad odds on something that is literally life and death.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Well, also consider that people live to be roughly ~100 years old. The population is roughly stable, so every year ~1% of the population must die and be replaced by a ~1% is born.
- brilee 5y ago
  Assuming risk is evenly distributed between birth and death, you would expect a 1 in 80 chance of dying in any given year. But since the risk is loaded towards the later years of life, 1 in 200 during the earlier years sounds about right. Perhaps it's 2x higher than I would have guessed otherwise, but it's the right order of magnitude.
  - brianwawok 5y ago
    No that is bad math around 1/80. If the average person had a 1/80 chance to die each year, the average life expectancy would be 40 years. Think about this another way. You have a gun with 80 chambers and 1 bullet. How many times on average can you point it at your head and pull the trigger before it goes off? Would you still argue 80 times? On average it is the last chamber?
    - leni536 5y ago
      That's not how it works. For a geometric distribution with p=1/80 the mean or expected value is indeed 80. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution Your gun example has a uniform distribution between 1 and 80 with an expected value of roughly 40 if you don't spin the chamber each time between pulling the trigger. If you spin it each time, then it's again the geometric distribution and the expected value is 80. If you don't spin the chamber between each time, then each time you pull the trigger the probability of dying at that round is not 1/80, the probability goes up and up at each round, it's only 1/80 on the first round.
      - capitalsigma 5y ago
        "evenly distributed" implies uniform distribution
        notfbi 5y ago
        To be fair, they said the risks are evenly distributed, not that deaths are.
      - adverbly 5y ago
        I had the same initial thought, but this isn't quite a perfect model... that distribution averaging assumes that the only factor at play is covid... but there are other chances of death with highly irregular probability distributions as a function of age... with other nonlinear weightings as a function of age you could get pretty different numbers in the end...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - adverbly 5y ago
      Are you sure? Is it not the same as this: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1009490/average-number-of-heads-in-a-row https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1009490/average-num... E = p/(1-p) So pretty close to 80 years, no? I guess it gets more complicated because you'd die of other reasons as you age so there's no point including the eventualities where you reached 120 for example... I guess it gets pretty complicated in the end...
  - minitoar 5y ago
    I think motor vehicle related mortality really shifts the risk forward.
- cm2187 5y ago
  Probably highly skewed to the upper end of that age range.
- benlivengood 5y ago
  https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html has the actuarial table by age, which is indeed a base rate above 0.002 from age 46 onward.
  - zuminator 5y ago
    That's true, but 0.002 is 1/500, not 1/200.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    Wow, remarkably the Queen, who is 95, is unlikely to make it to 100. In fact her annual hurdle rate is greater than 1/5. Am I reading this wrong?
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
- vasilipupkin 5y ago
  think of it this way, 1 in 200 means the chance that you will not die is 99.5% When put that way, sounds pretty good, right?
  - chucksmash 5y ago
    Think of it this way, 1 in 200 means the chance that you will die is 10x worse than that of someone base jumping[0]. When put this way, sounds pretty bad, right? [0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17495709/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17495709/
    - vasilipupkin 5y ago
      No, I mean, 1 in 200 chance here refers to living, which includes all activities, including BASE jumping
- lordnacho 5y ago
  How old are you? How many people from your high school years have passed? Say, in your year and the years adjacent, where you might be told the news? Out of about 90, I can count 4. Graduated 1999. 1 in 200 per year sounds like it might be ballpark, though of course from my limited set it's hard to tell. Assuming the rate is low at around 40 but a fair bit lower when you've just graduated, and a fair bit higher as you pass 60.
- kragen 5y ago
  https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html confirms that. In the US, it's about 1 in 400 for men at 40, 1 in 600 for women; at 50 it's 1 in 200 for men and 1 in 300 for women; and at 60 it's 1 in 90 for men, 1 in 150 for women. About 17% of US men, and 11% of US women, who make it to 40 are dead before 66. These are all pre-covid rates (from 02017).
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Define "very low". I think the "half a percent" number can seem "artificially" low because it's just looking at the probability of death in a single year. Looking at US actuarial tables, even an 80 year old has an annual chance of death of less than 5%. Just looking at that number alone may make one think that is a "low" death rate, but nobody is surprised when an 80 year-old dies.
toss1 5y ago
- spamizbad 5y ago
  People really need to multiply that death rate against a population of people who are likely to be infected. And they are skipping this step for whatever reason. A death rate of 20% isn’t bad if it’s a rare disease that has a 10 cases worldwide (2 deaths), whereas a 0.2% death rate is devastating for a highly contagious virus that spreads rapidly over the planet (millions of deaths)
  - toss1 5y ago
    That was already done, and specified in the comment. >>“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.” In fact, it was the entire point of the article - this disease is so bad because the entire population of people is subject to infection, and the death and disability rate is very substantial. >>whereas a 0.2% death rate is devastating for a highly contagious virus that spreads rapidly over the planet (millions of deaths) We've got that. Here. In this topic and case. So, I'm really struggling to see the point of the comment. ?
- csee 5y ago
  > a significant portion end up losing 7-10 IQ points just from dementia There probably is an IQ drop, but I question this figure. I recall a study doing the rounds here which showed this figure as a ballpark and it was very low quality.
  - toss1 5y ago
    From direct accounts, the figure is likely low. A good attorney friend has a friend who used to be one of the sharpest and most witty attorneys he knew. Months after a "mild case" (no hospitalization), the friend is not all there, fading in and out - he'll literally fade in and make a witty comment almost like before, then seconds later not remember it..., and hasn't been able to get back to work. That sounds like a lot more than 10 points, more like 140->95. Even if the effects are temporary, and even if it's "only five points", I'm not interested in that risk, and you shouldn't be either.
cma 5y ago
Half a percent is Russian roulette with 2.9 do-overs.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jb1991 5y ago

I’m surprised it is as high as you claim! You’re saying that for that age group, in a given year, the chances are 1 in 200 of dying? That seems like pretty bad odds on something that is literally life and death.

thehappypm 5y ago
Well, also consider that people live to be roughly ~100 years old. The population is roughly stable, so every year ~1% of the population must die and be replaced by a ~1% is born.
brilee 5y ago
Assuming risk is evenly distributed between birth and death, you would expect a 1 in 80 chance of dying in any given year. But since the risk is loaded towards the later years of life, 1 in 200 during the earlier years sounds about right. Perhaps it's 2x higher than I would have guessed otherwise, but it's the right order of magnitude.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  No that is bad math around 1/80. If the average person had a 1/80 chance to die each year, the average life expectancy would be 40 years. Think about this another way. You have a gun with 80 chambers and 1 bullet. How many times on average can you point it at your head and pull the trigger before it goes off? Would you still argue 80 times? On average it is the last chamber?
  - leni536 5y ago
    That's not how it works. For a geometric distribution with p=1/80 the mean or expected value is indeed 80. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution Your gun example has a uniform distribution between 1 and 80 with an expected value of roughly 40 if you don't spin the chamber each time between pulling the trigger. If you spin it each time, then it's again the geometric distribution and the expected value is 80. If you don't spin the chamber between each time, then each time you pull the trigger the probability of dying at that round is not 1/80, the probability goes up and up at each round, it's only 1/80 on the first round.
    - capitalsigma 5y ago
      "evenly distributed" implies uniform distribution
      - notfbi 5y ago
        To be fair, they said the risks are evenly distributed, not that deaths are.
    - adverbly 5y ago
      I had the same initial thought, but this isn't quite a perfect model... that distribution averaging assumes that the only factor at play is covid... but there are other chances of death with highly irregular probability distributions as a function of age... with other nonlinear weightings as a function of age you could get pretty different numbers in the end...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - adverbly 5y ago
    Are you sure? Is it not the same as this: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1009490/average-number-of-heads-in-a-row https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1009490/average-num... E = p/(1-p) So pretty close to 80 years, no? I guess it gets more complicated because you'd die of other reasons as you age so there's no point including the eventualities where you reached 120 for example... I guess it gets pretty complicated in the end...
- minitoar 5y ago
  I think motor vehicle related mortality really shifts the risk forward.
cm2187 5y ago
Probably highly skewed to the upper end of that age range.
benlivengood 5y ago
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html has the actuarial table by age, which is indeed a base rate above 0.002 from age 46 onward.
- zuminator 5y ago
  That's true, but 0.002 is 1/500, not 1/200.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Wow, remarkably the Queen, who is 95, is unlikely to make it to 100. In fact her annual hurdle rate is greater than 1/5. Am I reading this wrong?
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
vasilipupkin 5y ago
think of it this way, 1 in 200 means the chance that you will not die is 99.5% When put that way, sounds pretty good, right?
- chucksmash 5y ago
  Think of it this way, 1 in 200 means the chance that you will die is 10x worse than that of someone base jumping[0]. When put this way, sounds pretty bad, right? [0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17495709/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17495709/
  - vasilipupkin 5y ago
    No, I mean, 1 in 200 chance here refers to living, which includes all activities, including BASE jumping
lordnacho 5y ago
How old are you? How many people from your high school years have passed? Say, in your year and the years adjacent, where you might be told the news? Out of about 90, I can count 4. Graduated 1999. 1 in 200 per year sounds like it might be ballpark, though of course from my limited set it's hard to tell. Assuming the rate is low at around 40 but a fair bit lower when you've just graduated, and a fair bit higher as you pass 60.
kragen 5y ago
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html confirms that. In the US, it's about 1 in 400 for men at 40, 1 in 600 for women; at 50 it's 1 in 200 for men and 1 in 300 for women; and at 60 it's 1 in 90 for men, 1 in 150 for women. About 17% of US men, and 11% of US women, who make it to 40 are dead before 66. These are all pre-covid rates (from 02017).

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

Define "very low". I think the "half a percent" number can seem "artificially" low because it's just looking at the probability of death in a single year. Looking at US actuarial tables, even an 80 year old has an annual chance of death of less than 5%. Just looking at that number alone may make one think that is a "low" death rate, but nobody is surprised when an 80 year-old dies.

toss1 5y ago

spamizbad 5y ago
People really need to multiply that death rate against a population of people who are likely to be infected. And they are skipping this step for whatever reason. A death rate of 20% isn’t bad if it’s a rare disease that has a 10 cases worldwide (2 deaths), whereas a 0.2% death rate is devastating for a highly contagious virus that spreads rapidly over the planet (millions of deaths)
- toss1 5y ago
  That was already done, and specified in the comment. >>“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.” In fact, it was the entire point of the article - this disease is so bad because the entire population of people is subject to infection, and the death and disability rate is very substantial. >>whereas a 0.2% death rate is devastating for a highly contagious virus that spreads rapidly over the planet (millions of deaths) We've got that. Here. In this topic and case. So, I'm really struggling to see the point of the comment. ?
csee 5y ago
> a significant portion end up losing 7-10 IQ points just from dementia There probably is an IQ drop, but I question this figure. I recall a study doing the rounds here which showed this figure as a ballpark and it was very low quality.
- toss1 5y ago
  From direct accounts, the figure is likely low. A good attorney friend has a friend who used to be one of the sharpest and most witty attorneys he knew. Months after a "mild case" (no hospitalization), the friend is not all there, fading in and out - he'll literally fade in and make a witty comment almost like before, then seconds later not remember it..., and hasn't been able to get back to work. That sounds like a lot more than 10 points, more like 140->95. Even if the effects are temporary, and even if it's "only five points", I'm not interested in that risk, and you shouldn't be either.

cma 5y ago

Half a percent is Russian roulette with 2.9 do-overs.