Have the risks been blown out of all proportion? Today’s New York Times reports:
While the overall symptomatic case fatality rate was 1.4 percent, for people who were 60 and older it was 2.6 percent. That makes the older age group about five times more likely to die than people with symptoms who were 30 to 59 years old, whose risk of dying was 0.5 percent. For those under 30, it was 0.3 percent.
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No.
Gosh. Thank you for your expansive response Andy.
Have the risks been blown out of all proportion?
“30 to 59 years old, whose risk of dying was 0.5 percent”
“For those under 30, it was 0.3 percent.”
It’s not just about the mortality rate of Wuhan (symbolic significance aside) the number of people who have died in Italy has exceeded China. COVID-19 also has potential long-term health problems even for those who recover:
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-recovery-damage-lung-function-gasping-air-hong-kong-doctors-2020-3?r=US&IR=T
It’s also important to point out that the rate of mortality has been debated recently even with the director of the WHO stating that it could be 3.4% but even this is difficult to determine.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/who-says-coronavirus-death-rate-is-3point4percent-globally-higher-than-previously-thought.html
Think about those percentages even in our country. The number of people who would die from the virus would be (according to 1.4%) 930,160.
Clearly youngsters like yourself would focus on those statistics, but old codgers like me are more likely to see “for people who were 60 and older it was 2.6 percent” which is pretty much where the earlier estimate was. And taking the all age ranges we have 1.4% vs 2.7% (midway between 2 and 3.4). Which I don’t regard as “blown out of all proportion”. And look at the error bars in the study – huge!
Andy, see the Guardian article estimate below…
Today’s Guardian:
What is the mortality rate of the new coronavirus?
It is probably about or a bit less than 1%. Much higher figures have been flying about, but the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, is one of those who believes it will prove to be 1% or lower. The World Health Organization’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, talked of 3.4%, but his figure was calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the number of officially confirmed cases. We know there are many more mild cases that do not get to hospital and are not being counted, which would bring the mortality rate significantly down.
Deaths are highest in the elderly, with very low rates among younger people, although medical staff who treat patients and get exposed to a lot of virus are thought to be more at risk. But even among the over-80s, 90% will recover.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/21/what-is-coronavirus-mortality-rate-covid-19