[gist]

> a. 70% of deaths were ages 70 and over and "majority" had underlying health conditions.

> b. ~80% of those who died under the age of 70 had underlying health conditions.

Underlying health conditions is a very broad metric. It could mean something as simple (possibly I don't know for sure) as 'high blood pressure'. I think we'd like to think of it as more severe than what that category includes.

It's similar in a way when their is a fire and the local papers say 'had several building code violations'. Without knowing what the violations were (and if they even mattered to the fire) I don't think many conclusions could be drawn.

And this assumes things are even categorized correctly in the first place.

Of course 'age' is age so that is most likely an accurate metric.

[dev1n]

I agree. I don't like having underlying health conditions listed as a statistic. I think it leads to people thinking "oh it only really affects people who are sick" and then those people go about their day as usual and spread the disease further. I didn't want to skip over it though out of fear of someone saying I tried to frame the stats to fit a narrative or something.