[Retric]

~30% of the population has little reason to fear an infection. That 0.2% risk of death for people under 40 largely includes people with significant underlying heath problems. At least assuming a functional healthcare system etc.

My mother on the other hand is looking at possibly months of near total isolation. At her age it’s a much larger threat.

[asveikau]

20-somethings have 0.2% death risk but I read 1% hospitalization rate. So if you are in that age group, and I put you with 99 of your infected friends, one of you ends up in the hospital.

For 30-somethings I believe this goes up to 3%. Then higher from there.

Neither of those are huge but nor are they zero. Neither is a .2% death rate at millions of infections. Those are real people, a lot of them will be young like you and in the hospital. We haven't even gotten into how you will put grandpa or your avuncular older neighbors or the old guy riding the bus at risk. Or how if you fall in that 1-3% that you will be competing for hospital resources with all the other pneumonia cases.

Was looking for more info and found this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/19/younger-adu...

Edit: is it me or did you edit and tone down your comment? In that case I apologize for putting it so harshly and personally. I will leave it as it is because people need to know this is serious for young people too.

[Retric]

I did edit the post, but my goal was clarity not really a neutral tone. From a public heath perspective it’s important for heathy young people to avoid spreading the disease. But, that’s pushing people to be somewhat deceptive with statistics. So, while I am minimizing contact with others for my personal heath and the general social good I think people may be overestimating their personal risks.

Underlying heath simply seems to play a huge role. In China 10-19 year olds represented 1.2% of the total known cases and 0.9% were 9 or younger. That might have been related to transmission with elderly social circles more widely spreading the disease, or exposure to related diseases etc. However, it’s more likely an indication of untested largely asymptotic cases.

PS: half of the 300 to 400 coronavirus patients treated in intensive care units in Paris were younger than 65

16.8% of the French population is over 65. 50% of their ICU cases are over 65. https://countrymeters.info/en/France That works out to about a 5:1 ratio even including 50-64 year olds at significant risk in the younger population. The avoidance of an age specific breakdown suggests they where aiming to convey a specific message rather than clearly conveying information.

[totalZero]

A virus isn't a Bernoulli trial that either kills you or entirely leaves you alone.

You could get sick and require hospitalization.

You could get sick and have permanent lung damage.

You could get sick from something else, or even break your collarbone in a car accident, and be unable to get adequate medical attention because of an outbreak in your region that you helped spread because you had "little reason to fear an infection."

You could infect and kill your mother.

A virus doesn't care how confident you are. It is just a little autonomous machine that uses your body to replicate itself. Don't behave in a way that helps it do that.

[brokenmachine]

I believe that even in young people, 16-20% will need hospital admission/intervention.

That's a lot of people, and how many of those can we expect to have health insurance?

[ModernMech]

Forget insurance -- if there is no hospital capacity because the system is flooded it doesn't matter if they have it or not. I've read for those who require hospitalization it's a 50% fatality rate. For those who need hospitalization but can't get it, it's closer to 100%.

[brokenmachine]

>I've read for those who require hospitalization it's a 50% fatality rate

I don't think it's that much, I think that it'd be more in the order of 15% of the people who require hospitalization that actually perish.

Well, until you run out of ventilators, that is...

[Retric]

You’re conflating hospitalization with the ICU. Many people end up hospitalized without needing a ventilator.