I mean, I’ve been saying this for a while and I don’t want to tire y’all out but, young being defined as under 40 and healthy being defined as without comorbid conditions.
The median age of the dead in Italy is 80.5 and 99.2% of them were sick, averaging 3 comorbid conditions [3]. So basically the opposite of that.
I keep reading this statistic about deaths in Italy, but how much of it is shaped by doctors desperately deciding to withhold care from the sickest in order to save others?
i.e., would the age curve be different in an ideal situation where everyone was getting optimal care, and is the statistic thus misleadingly suggesting that younger people are less at risk?
Would the curve be different in an ideal situation where the hospitals weren't completely overrun and out of resources? Yes, of course. However, I would guess that if care was withheld, it was based on disease state and patient robustness. Age is part of that equation so it is hard to separate it out. In other words, a fit healthy, no comorbidity senior whose immune system is fighting hard is probably not having treatment withheld just because of age. I'm not there of course, but based on accounts I think this is right. At least I hope so.
As an aside, you were certainly not being judgmental about the clinicians in Italy and I applaud you for that. Those professionals are doing incredible work in unbelievably difficult and personally dangerous situations, so I hope we can all agree not to second guess their decisions from the cheap seats.
I was not suggesting that Italian doctors might be withholding treatment "just because of age." Clearly, as you state, there will always be a strong correlation between age and overall health.
I was trying to point out that some people using the statistics about age and mortality from Italy are trying to use them as justification for doing less to combat the disease's spread, and that might be a dangerously misleading gambit.
This is a summary of all cases in Colorado. All of our state's (small handful of) fatalities have been among residents aged 60 and over. The hospitalization rate is ~5% or so for adults in the 30-50 year old range, and it rises to about 20% in the elderly age groups.
Caveats: with only 600 cases to draw inferences from, there's a little less than one digit of precision in those estimates. Testing availability is also still somewhat limited in the state with a little more than a 10% positive rate.
The Imperial College paper that was being passed around said about 1% of 20somethings, 3% of 30somethings, and 5% of 40somethings wind up hospitalized.
I think if your population trends younger this can mean pretty high absolute numbers even if low percentages. A number of news sites in various places said the under 50 crowd is using significant portions of hospital resources.
I keep hearing statistics like this and I yell at my TV every time. Counting up the people in the hospital is pretty easy, but it doesn't answer the more important question of how many infected 20-54 require hospitalization. Even comparing those numbers to the larger demographics would be helpful.
The median age of the dead in Italy is 80.5 and 99.2% of them were sick, averaging 3 comorbid conditions [3]. So basically the opposite of that.
[1] https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609?s...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm
[3] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/arti...