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COVID-19 Links, facts and discussion. Politics and hyperbole welcome.

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21.7% of persons over 65 in the US are in fair to poor health

Obestity Rates
  • Men aged 65-74: 40.2%
  • Men aged 75 and over: 28.0%
  • Women aged 65-74: 43.5%
  • Women aged 75 and over: 32.7%
Other complication with our elderly population is too many to list.
None of that changes the average age of death by Covid 19. Over 80 years old. I think it is pretty much the same across the globe. Your chances of death by Corona if 70 or under is very low. We have about 200,000 confirmed cases and approx 8,000 deaths. That is a pretty large sample size.
 
Will be interesting to see if today's drop in new cases and deaths is showing the top of the curve for Italy or if it is just a slight dip on an otherwise upward trend.

They did have a reporting day earlier that seemed like it was just a mistake that showed a drop but the next day it was up a bit more than you would expect. Hopefully this time it is the top of the curve and about to start downward.
 
Will be interesting to see if today's drop in new cases and deaths is showing the top of the curve for Italy or if it is just a slight dip on an otherwise upward trend.

They did have a reporting day earlier that seemed like it was just a mistake that showed a drop but the next day it was up a bit more than you would expect. Hopefully this time it is the top of the curve and about to start downward.
Some are reportedly dying at home so there has been some references to slower than expected official updates from Italy
 
None of that changes the average age of death by Covid 19. Over 80 years old. I think it is pretty much the same across the globe. Your chances of death by Corona if 70 or under is very low. We have about 200,000 confirmed cases and approx 8,000 deaths. That is a pretty large sample size.

Looking at this from a risk of death perspective is a bit myopic. Financial costs, system strain and a whole bunch of other issues associated with infection.....not to mention those that don't make it into the statistics like stress and anxiety.

As an example, my lab company in Germany that provides a unique lab analysis is no longer taking our blood work until things calm down. What do I tell may patients that need their labwork done so they can get on a protocol?
 
It will be interesting to see when they get more data if the "hypertension effect" is real or just an artifact of the age of the patients - by this I mean, if you are 45 years old and have treated hypertension are you actually at higher risk.

Or if they find that the drugs people were taking made them more like to get the disease.

losartan the drug I take for hbp is currently being tested as a possible treatment for corona virus as it’s a antigen receptor blocker and some think it may inhibit the ability of the virus to invade cells.
 
Thankfully there are those of us that respect and cherish our elders. Some of the rhetoric on here makes me think they would religate their elders to cannon fodder. Preety dispicable.

Anyway some food for thought.


 
Looking at this from a risk of death perspective is a bit myopic. Financial costs, system strain and a whole bunch of other issues associated with infection.....not to mention those that don't make it into the statistics like stress and anxiety.

As an example, my lab company in Germany that provides a unique lab analysis is no longer taking our blood work until things calm down. What do I tell may patients that need their labwork done so they can get on a protocol?

Well the data is pretty clear on who the vulnerable are in this situation. I think it calls for being a bit myopic. Folks that are 80+ are the ones at high risk of dying. USA has 3 million folks 80+. Have all of them shelter in place, self quarantine, or social distance. Use 1% of the soon to be trillion dollar stimulus bill and have all of their groceries, medicine, etc... delivered by someone in a hazmat uniform for the next few months. Let everyone else go about life with a slightly worse than normal flu season, while at the same time building up herd immunity.
 
UV thing very interesting. They should have walk through UV booths at all airports even when we don't have a pandemic.
The problem is that at intensity and wavelength needed would cause burns and eye damage. It can be used with indirect exposure with no problems but it's pretty dangerous with direct skin or eye contact.
 
I heard a interview on NPR this morning with a guy in Italy who had been quarantined in his house and not gone outside for 10 days, seems like a terrible practice. Sunlight ie Vitamin d is essential to immune health, I saw a report of a study done during the the 1918 pandemic where soldiers being treated outdoors in open sunlight and air had a 40% higher chance of survival.
 
Well the data is pretty clear on who the vulnerable are in this situation. I think it calls for being a bit myopic. Folks that are 80+ are the ones at high risk of dying. USA has 3 million folks 80+. Have all of them shelter in place, self quarantine, or social distance. Use 1% of the soon to be trillion dollar stimulus bill and have all of their groceries, medicine, etc... delivered by someone in a hazmat uniform for the next few months. Let everyone else go about life with a slightly worse than normal flu season, while at the same time building up herd immunity.
I don't few this as discussion.
 
Kansas just closed school for the remainder of the year. Unfortunately it’s going to be the students that ultimately suffer for this decision. Talk about a huge setback for ones education

 
Well the data is pretty clear on who the vulnerable are in this situation. I think it calls for being a bit myopic. Folks that are 80+ are the ones at high risk of dying. USA has 3 million folks 80+. Have all of them shelter in place, self quarantine, or social distance. Use 1% of the soon to be trillion dollar stimulus bill and have all of their groceries, medicine, etc... delivered by someone in a hazmat uniform for the next few months. Let everyone else go about life with a slightly worse than normal flu season, while at the same time building up herd immunity.

I repeatedly see people making the comparison between average ages and CFR between Italy, China, US, and trying to make the argument that it can’t really be that bad because of how it spread in X country. It’s more complicated than that. First, you are failing to take into account population demographics. The average age of the population is much higher in Italy, so yes you would expect there to be more mortalities there and the average age of mortalities to be higher. You can not simply extrapolate that to all populations where the demographics are different. There are different health factors, lifestyle differences, genetic differences that can manifest in differential mortality in populations.

When looking at disease curves, you also have to consider cultural differences. In many other countries, including Italy, it is extremely common to have three or even four generations living together in close quarters under one roof. That is going to result in a much different transmission pattern than in places where that is not a common living situation. Conversely, having a population of people who are resistant to social distancing practices will also alter the transmission curve, and not in a good way. It is not as simple as comparing X country to Y country and saying “See? They are different (or the same).”

As for why this virus is different than past viruses that have been in the news... it takes a special combination of a susceptible naive population, infectivity and transmissibility. Those depend on the specific little bits of genetic material unique to each virus. There is some evidence that a virus very similar to the H1N1 virus had circulated decades earlier, so there was some level of immunity present in the segments of the population that were alive and exposed to that earlier event. The others (SARS for example) just didn’t transmit super efficiently through the population, which made it relatively easy to stop. This one happens to have the right combination of characteristics to make it bad...highly transmissible, has not previously circulated in humans so the human “herd” in general has no immunity, and it happens to cause relatively significant respiratory disease in a higher than usual proportion of the population. So why is this virus different from those others? Because it has different mutations that give it different characteristics than those other viruses had. This is normal...more dramatic but no different than having different flu strains every year. Some are worse than others...depends on the mutations each virus possesses and whether the population has previous exposure or not.
 
Kansas just closed school for the remainder of the year. Unfortunately it’s going to be the students that ultimately suffer for this decision. Talk about a huge setback for ones education

One advantage the cold north has is most of our jr/high schools have worked out a "learning from home/online" protocol to deal with winter outages. If MN goes to this extent (which they haven't at this time), I would guess many would cancel in person classes but still run some type of stripped down online program for essential learning for jr/high schoolers. But big disruption either way.
 
Well the data is pretty clear on who the vulnerable are in this situation. I think it calls for being a bit myopic. Folks that are 80+ are the ones at high risk of dying. USA has 3 million folks 80+. Have all of them shelter in place, self quarantine, or social distance. Use 1% of the soon to be trillion dollar stimulus bill and have all of their groceries, medicine, etc... delivered by someone in a hazmat uniform for the next few months. Let everyone else go about life with a slightly worse than normal flu season, while at the same time building up herd immunity.
Median age of Italy is like 48yrs, which is 10yrs older than US. It might be the oldest population in the World (you will have to check me on that). You are still correct that the oldest are most vulnerable, but we knew that. You solution would be fine except those in the higher age brackets are not the only ones vulnerable. So for the 40yr old that gets it and dies do we just call it collateral damage? In the end, solutions for a democracy are different than solutions under an autocracy.
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