
Why Does Covid-19 Kill So Many Older People? - likajan
https://www.labroots.com/trending/health-and-medicine/17095/covid-19-kill-people
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bjornsing
This doesn’t seem very interesting from a scientific standpoint, and it’s also
a somewhat dangerous message politically. The director of the WHO said
yesterday that a significant proportion of those requiring hospitalization are
under 50. In France and Sweden 50% of patients admitted to ICUs are under 65.

So the right understanding should be: if you’re young _and you have access to
intensive care_ you will survive. But making sure all have access to intensive
care is not easy...

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bjornsing
And don’t forget: slowly deteriorating to the point where you need intensive
care is not a fun experience...

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notlukesky
Basically people over 75 years of age have much weaker immune systems. And
most of those also suffer from other illnesses and Covid 19 compounds that.

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kwhitefoot
On average this is true but all of those in that age group who have died in
Norway so far had worse than average health to begin with. At least here there
are many octogenarians who are really quite fit, physically active, and
healthy.

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kwhitefoot
I think that the apparent death rates depend very much on timing, population
density, general health and fitness, access to intensive care facilities, and
the details of how cases and deaths are counted.

Compare for instance the UK and Norway. Norway has about 1500 confirmed cases
with seven deaths, average age of those dying is over eighty.

The UK with about three and half thousand confirmed cases has nearly two
hundred deaths.

So on this basis the UK has a bit over twice the number of cases but twenty
five times the number of deaths.

This suggests that several of the factors I mentioned have a substantial
effect on the reported likelihood of dying in the two countries; but which
ones and is the likelihood really as different as it seems?

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chippy
You really cannot and should not compare confirmed cases / tests vs deaths
when the calculation of confirmed cases or tests varies from place to place.

For example, South Korea where anyone can get a test, versus the UK where only
ill people in hospital will get a test.

So what can you do? Possibly compare the number of sick people who have been
tested in hospital? Possibly you need to control for demographics, and
certainly per population. Possibly compare to official estimates of total
population infected (e.g. UK could be around 50K now)

Then you can start to look at the differences, but the error rates are going
to be large.

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kwhitefoot
> You really cannot and should not compare confirmed cases / tests vs deaths
> when the calculation of confirmed cases or tests varies from place to place.

That was my point.

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emmelaich
Doesn't answer the obvious question .. which is why does covid-19
disproportionally affect the old _compared to other influenza viruses._

Or _appears_ to.

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33degrees
Covid-19 is not an influenza virus, coronaviruses are a different family

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DanBC
Yes.

Also, we have massive campaigns to immunise as many vulnerable as possible
against flu every year.

