
'Dramatic decline' in average age of Florida coronavirus patients - elsewhen
https://www.wptv.com/news/state/florida-gov-ron-desantis-to-give-coronavirus-update-at-florida-international-university
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goalieca
Patients in this article refer to positive tests and no hospitalizations. The
article also mentions that they are currently not showing symptoms or only
mild symptoms. This is expected based on our understanding of the disease.
Media editorializing the headlines to be misleading to the general public is
also expected based on the past few months.

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nkozyra
Huh? How is the headline editorialized? It's factual and includes a quote from
the governor.

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thu2111
Because someone becomes a patient when they're being treated by a doctor, not
when they simply test positive but have no apparent problems.

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roenxi
Possibly the correct headline is something more like "Florida has nearly
enough tests now".

The average age of a COVID patient should be roughly the same as the average
age of the population. If it isn't that suggests, on the face of it, biased
testing.

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smt88
> _If it isn 't that suggests, on the face of it, biased testing._

Not true at all. Covid-19 doesn't infect people equally. It seems children are
less likely to be infected at all, not just sickened.

It doesn't spread equally, because certain age groups are more likely to live
in group housing.

And what is Florida's "population"? Lots of people vacation there. Do you
count them?

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roenxi
There have reports both ways. It seems quite reasonable that nobody has been
looking very hard where there aren't any symptoms.
[https://www.livescience.com/can-kids-get-
coronavirus.html](https://www.livescience.com/can-kids-get-coronavirus.html)

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tgafpc2
Since the beginning, Florida has been acting to protect the most vulnerable to
serious complications. And it's working. It is widely understood that young
healthy people are very low risk so those same young healthy people are using
that information to get back to life with very little risk.

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virmundi
What I find interesting is that many are asymptomatic. If this is true, and
means that the disease does not cause meaningful harm, should we be worried?
Is this going to be in reality more like a 24 hour bug?

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xiphias2
For young people going through the disease asymptotically and having anti-
bodies is like winning the lottery: they can socialize freely and stop
worrying about infecting their family with the virus.

So unless the age of hospitalization goes down, it's a good sign.

~~~
pintxo
This is if you get long lasting antibodies from an asymptomatic case, which
seems to be unclear.

This seems to be early researcher needing more confirmation, but see for
example here: [https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-antibodies-
lost-10-wuha...](https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-antibodies-
lost-10-wuhan-study-patients-within-21-days-1511850)

