[sonicggg]

It seems that anecdotal evidence of young people dying of COVID-19 is the trend of the moment. Not sure if it's just cheap clickbait or the goal is to make younger generations to actually care about social distancing.

The deal is that we are dealing with the power of large numbers. You can cherry-pick whatever case you want to fit your narrative. It does not mean its relevant information.

[spyspy]

Anecdotally, my parents keep bringing up this narrative every time we talk on the phone. I've reminded them that while me and my fiance dutifully haven't left the house since last Sunday they've happily gone to the grocery store multiple times, attended a funeral, and had wine at their neighbor's house. They also refused to stop babysitting my niece and nephew until I called my brother and convinced him to stop dropping them off. But no, young people are the reckless ones.

[corpMaverick]

As a parent of a young man. I understand why your parents have these fears. They know what they are doing, but they don´t know what you are doing other than what you tell them. Even if they trust you, this is a deeper fear. You could start lecturing your parents about how dangerous this is, so they are convinced that you are taking it seriously.

[beat]

As the parent of adult children currently living at home... one of ours keeps going out to be with friends. I understand she needs to get out of the house sometimes, but it's unnerving, knowing the points of contact (she often goes to her boyfriend's house, with his five currently-unemployed roommates).

Then again, she works in a children's health clinic. I know what vector is probably going to bring COVID into our house.

[dchichkov]

It'd be interesting to understand what evolutionary pressures the combined behaviors of population have on COVID-19.

Distancing arguably should create evolutionary pressure towards a weaker, asymptomatic, more contagious virus. And reckless behavior in the segments of population unaffected by the virus may put evolutionary pressure to make it a stronger, but not as contagious virus.

(an uninformed opinion of a software engineer / researcher)...

[me_me_me]

> Distancing arguably should create evolutionary pressure towards a weaker, asymptomatic, more contagious virus

This doesn't make sense to me. Distancing reduces number of cases and chances to spread infections, reducing chances for successful mutations.

It seems that instead of having multiple strains you will end up with most resilient strain in the end. But that's probably better as you have to fight a single strain then.

[SamBam]

I would really hope that someone working in a health clinic would be more careful than that. Going over to other people's houses is exactly what people are not supposed to be doing.

From my observations, the people who are most flippant about this seem to be boomers and young adults 20-25. I still see groups of young adults on the sidewalks, clearly not roommates, even though our state is in lockdown, and we're right next to a state that's starting to overwhelm their hospitals because of this kind of behavior.

[jwbwater]

A healthcare worker I talked to had the opinion that she's getting exposed at work anyway so why not do what she wants outside of work.

[kian]

shame that this healthcare worker apparently doesn't care for the other people she exposes. Perhaps the wrong profession?

[JPKab]

You're at really high risk in that living situation.

Does she not have another place she can stay? I'm assuming she is aware of the risk to you?

Never met you before, but as a fellow human being that situation sounds very high risk for you.

I'm very glad that none of my dad's five kids boomeranged right now. I had to cancel visiting him. Terrible situation.

[beat]

She's back at home temporarily (broke up with a boyfriend that left her in a bad financial situation, moved back home to recuperate). She was planning to move out this summer and move in with friends who were buying a house, but buying a house may not be viable for them now due to a job at risk.

Someone once gave me a definition of family... "If you have to go there, they have to let you in".

On the flip side, I think we're all going to get exposed sooner or later, over the course of the next year or so. I'll just get exposed sooner than ideal.

On the plus side, she may be moving entirely to work from home in the near future, as they'll be closing inpatient services at her clinic. On the minus side, her brother just got a job at a grocery store after losing his retail job at the mall (mall closed), so now he's probably an even worse vector than she is.

[jetset15]

Lecturing is a good idea, even more so if you rarely lecture your parents back, which I assume a lot of children don't. This is something I did to my parents and it changed the way they are approaching this pandemic. Social distancing is happening here now and they have respected my thoughts and ideas since they're scared and trust the information I'm supplying them is valuable.

[AndrewKemendo]

Another anecdote to put on the pile:

I spoke with my mother recently and we were lamenting how people were completely ignoring the "JUST STAY HOME" guidance. As the call was ending she mentioned how she was about to have her sisters and friends over for wine the next day. To which I replied that she was doing exactly what she was lamenting others doing.

I think most people just assume they are the exception and can be trusted to do this correctly, when in fact the guidance is the way it is explicitly because that is not the case.

[BurningFrog]

Maybe they care more about your life than their own.

[VectorLock]

I've been hearing "I rather die from Coronavirus than live my life in fear of it" from some at risk people who don't wish to isolate. Which I suppose is their decision. They'll unfortunately change their tack pretty fast when it becomes hard to breathe.

[vardump]

Unfortunately once infected, that risk-taker will infect others and accelerate disease growth rate.

Infecting others who have no option to completely isolate or are just plain unlucky. Some of which will have possibly life-long lung damage. And some will die who would have otherwise survived.

Responsible people isolate, because they don't want to harm or worse, kill others.

[taylodl]

It's not about living in fear. We're not quarantined because of fear. We're quarantined because of knowledge - we know how contagious this is, we know what the hospitalization rates are, we know our medical resources will be quickly depleted and we know how to slow the spread until we're better able to respond. The question we need to ask ourselves is why weren't we prepared?

[ballenf]

The fear is of the unknown chance that it will be serious for you or someone close to you. I think everyone is resigned to the fact that they'll get it eventually.

Personally, I'm more in fear of having some non-coronavirus related emergency and not being to get good healthcare.

[abnry]

Don't meet anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence.

[save_ferris]

We’re also dealing with the fallout of living in a “post-truth” era, where we as a society can no longer agree with basic facts.

Yes, it’s exceedingly rare to see a case like this, but what’s not rare is seeing the examples of people not taking this disease seriously, even some public officials.

Getting people to cooperate with drastic disease mitigation efforts won’t happen if there’s a probability embedded in that headline. People are doing that in their heads already when they think “this can’t happen to me, so let’s all go to the beach today.”

[SpicyLemonZest]

But that mindset is exactly why we're in a post-truth era. If a news outlet's primary goal is convincing people to do the right thing rather than accurately communicating information, why should we trust that the information they communicate is accurate?

[lgleason]

Exactly. Many are the same outlets who also are happy to do the bidding of the Chinese government that has a horrible human rights record, be overtly political/partisan, shill for corporate interests over facts and the best interests of the average person and who regularly moralize instead of reporting. Thanks, but no thanks.

[beepboopbeep]

Doing the right thing and accurate information can be one in the same.

[didgeoridoo]

They can, or they cannot. The media lying about the effectiveness of masks for several weeks was “right” in that it probably allowed hospitals to refresh their stockpiles before mass panic buying set in. But it was a lie nonetheless. Same with the “coronavirus is a virus, Purell is useless because it is antibacterial” meme. The media is burning its credibility in favor of noble lies — but at the end, will it be worth it?

[beepboopbeep]

Yes, of course it's worth it. The media's credibility isn't a finite resource. It ebbs and flows like everything else in this world. Nothing is as binary as you see it.

[thu2111]

Over what time span?

If what you say is true we should have seen trust in the media go up and down a lot over time. In fact it's really only gone down, with one exception - in the USA after Trump got elected trust in the media went up amongst Democrats only. Presumably because they realised the media was completely partisan and in their "tribe". Trust amongst Republicans, which like Democrats had been falling for a long time, completely collapsed at that point.

In most parts of the world it's just been one downward slide.

In these events I don't think the media deserve the blame though. They're not helping but they're not pushing a pre-determined agenda, I think. The evidence that we're in the grip of mass hysteria and not a deadly pandemic is growing enormously every day, and much of that evidence actually is being surfaced in newspaper reports. It's just not affecting the overall narrative yet.

[SpicyLemonZest]

But again, you must see the problem here. To consider the media's credibility a resource at all is a post-truth concept. It presumes that the media is targeted towards a bunch of rubes, who've gotta be manipulated towards the goals you and I know are best. The natural result is exactly the trend we're seeing; almost everyone who pays attention says "well, I'm not a rube, so I guess I'd better get my real information elsewhere".

[ajna91]

The is-ought problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

[JPKab]

I just want to point out that the public health authorities and the news media in the United States have completely lied about the efficacy of face masks. Their goal was to preserve a dwindling stockpile of N95 masks, and in the process they told the public that face mask of any kind don't help prevent the spread of the disease and this is patently false.

so let's keep this in mind before we get in our high horse about people not listening to the media and the government because of this crap. The R0 of the disease is much lower in countries where everyone is wearing face masks of any kind.

Everyone on reading this should Google the fact that that homemade face mask made out of cloth are actually highly effective in reducing the spread of this illness.

[fortran77]

I started wearing a well-fitting home-made face mask that completely covers my nose and mouth after reading papers I found on nih.gov and who.int that talked about their effectiveness.

I meet doubters all the time who tell me that "home made masks make it worse" when the masks (not the n95 respirators) worn by nurses, that are loose fitting but prevent particles of saliva from entering nose or mouth are generally accepted as helpful.

[tarr11]

When was this “golden age of truth” era that we are now after? There have always been conspiracies, mystics, cults and anti science sentiments.

Do you have any evidence to show it’s worse than it ever was?

[blaser-waffle]

Right? Does no one remember the era of William Randolph Hearst and "yellow journalism"? Or all of the horrible BS surrounding Fatty Arbuckle?

One of the primary causes of the Spanish-American War was Hearst's newspapers putting outrageous headlines on papers to drive sales.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

[magduf]

Several decades ago, it wasn't nearly this bad or widespread. Sure, there's always been conspiracies and anti-science sentiments, but the mass adoption made all that crap much more easily accessible to the masses, so it spread like a disease. Instead of everyone getting their news from Walter Cronkite, now they get it from Alex Jones.

[magduf]

Whoops, I left out a phrase. This should read: "...but the mass adoption of the internet made all that crap much more easily accessible to the masses..."

[thu2111]

Do you have any evidence to show it’s worse than it ever was?

I guess you can't measure truth in an absolute sense, but you can measure people's perception of it, and trust in institutions - especially the press - is at all time lows.

[macintux]

At what previous point in time could a conspiracy theory reach 25% of the world’s population within a day? When was the last time the U.S. president was espousing conspiracy theories to a global audience?

[tarr11]

It has always been this way.

“Americans love conspiracy theories. Conspiratorial rhetoric in presidential campaigns and its distracting impact on the body politic have been a fixture in American elections from the beginning, but conspiracies flourished in the 1820s and 1830s, when modern-day American political parties developed, and the expansion of white male suffrage increased the nation’s voting base. “

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/conspiracy-theories-a...

[macintux]

The speed is categorically different, as is the reach.

[Kaiyou]

Before the internet, when it was easily controlled through the media what everyone had to think. It was a golden age where one entity decided on the truth and pretty much nobody disagreed to any noticeable effect.

Now more and more people get exposed to more than one viewpoint of reality and are beginning to not blindly trust the media. This leads to people actually having to discuss points that previously only had to be stated, for everyone to believe them or at least to not have lots of people disagreeing showing up and having the opportunity to talk with other disagreeing people.

So we get amusing situations like holocaust deniers getting told it's illegal to do so, which of course only strengthens their belief. But rarely is there somebody showing up refuting, since that takes effort.

That leaves us in a post-truth world, where nobody simply can state something and have everyone believe it. Instead everything that gets questioned needs to be discussed, like "Do vaccines cause autism?" or "Are there more than two sexes?". Kind of like the difference between having a King and having democracy.

Personally, I blame the media for being verified liars for the loss of trust in them. Everyone can be wrong on occasion, but it takes a liar to stick to their guns after being proven wrong. I mean, did anyone ever actually believe that a "magic" bullet killed Kennedy?

[lgleason]

I completely agree with us being in a "post-truth" era. And both sides are responsible for this. You have everything from people denying basic biological science to everything else in between. To be fair, some people are aware of the risks are are willing to roll the dice. Keep in mind that some of the elderly who are stubborn grew up before we had many of our modern vaccines such as measles etc.. Some of the really old ones even before antibiotics were around.

I know some who are of the opinion that they could die at any point anyways so they would rather just live life. Some also worry that prolonged quarantines could damage the country and decimate small businesses along with the middle class. For them they would rather take the risk and sacrifice for a better future for their kids. Of course there are others who are self centered jerks, but the point is that there are good arguments on both sides.

Also, with post truth... A lot of people who were, up until this pandemic started, denying basic biological facts. Some of that ideology had even begun to makes its way into the major research and medical schools. That doesn't help with credibility when the same individuals start saying that everyone needs to quarantine.

The same people who were censoring people based on ideology, at times over facts, are now claiming that they are censoring "mis-information". Once again, many people are naturally skeptical. In many ways this is one of the natural result of "post truth" fiction and ideology being favored over facts. We reap what we sew.

[pavon]

It is trying to counter misconceptions that COVID-19 is harmless to young healthy people based on misinterpretations of guidance that elderly and those with preexisting conditions are most at risk. Just because younger people are at less risk doesn't mean they have no risk. While the numbers have been hard to pin down, early data from China showed that more than 10% of people in their 20s-40s with the disease had critical cases. Some other studies outside China have put that number at 15-20%. The number of severe cases is much less, but not 0.

With proper treatment nearly all of those critical cases will survive. But if the health care system becomes overwhelmed that may no longer be true.

It is trying to sink in the idea that young people are not invincible to COVID-19 and that they need to practice social distancing, if not for the benefit of society as a whole, then for their own self benefit.

[JoeAltmaier]

I think I read that statistic differently - that of the critical cases, 10-14% were between 20 to 40.

Not a per-capita number. Not a percentage of young people - a percentage of sick people. Folks in that wide age bracket are around 30% of the US total population. The old - 15%?

[pavon]

Statistics have been reported for both directions.

Early US data[1] showed:

* 20% of (COVID-19 patients hospitalized) were age 20-44 years.

* 12% of (COVID-19 patients in ICU) were age 20-44

The same report also tallied result by age group, stating that:

* 14-20% of (COVID-19 patients age 20-44) were hospitalized

* 2-4% of (COVID-19 patients age 20-44) were in ICU

Ranges due to not all data sources reporting hospitalization/ICU status.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm

[d1str0]

That is a big and important distinction.

[ramblerman]

Fear sells. This is tragic, but the exception to the rule.

To add some weight to your argument, the official stats from italy offer clear data [1]:

- 1.1% of deaths in Italy < 50 years old

- No deaths < 30

- 99% with comorbidities, 75% with at least 2 comorbidities.

[1] https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...

[stanfordkid]

This is insane -- Median age of 60 for diagnosed patients?

What this indicates to me is that Italy was testing only the worst patients. This whole scare to me reeks of sampling bias. We only test the worst patients for covid 19 which ups the mortality rate.

The truth is -- people who are at risk should social distance themselves rather than the general population. We want herd immunity to develop for this disease -- that means having young healthy people be exposed to it.

[zaroth]

Absolutely there is huge sampling bias in testing. This is true over the entire world.

No one knows what percent of the broader population in Italy have been infected, asymptomatic or otherwise.

We can hope the number is closer to 1 million or 10 million than it is to 100,000. Because you can’t hide the severe and critical cases, a wider incidence means a lower severity. But we have no scientific data on this absolutely crucial statistic.

The only proxy we have is the positive rate for tests that are performed. Recently it was reported that the positive testing rate in NYC was as a high as 28%. This implies that the general population infection incidence is extremely high, e.g. several million cases in NYC. Ideally you would want to see a positive test rate closer to 1-3%.

[danenania]

Is that realistic? Many of the most vulnerable people are in nursing homes with a lot of younger staff, or else they have to go to the doctor/hospital frequently for other reasons. It’s hard to see how it won’t end up infecting a huge number of these people if we let it spread at the max rate.

[josh_fyi]

I don't understand the 99% statistic. It is hard to imagine that any measurement, where errors and odd cases are inevitable, is almost exactly 100%

[SpicyLemonZest]

It sounds like you've understood it correctly. The data strongly suggests that COVID-19 isn't a deadly disease for otherwise healthy people, and any apparently healthy young people who die from it are most likely "errors and odd cases". (Although framing it that way could imply too strong of a conclusion - comorbidities in the study include hypertension and diabetes, which aren't exactly rare.)

[danenania]

The hospitalization rates for younger people in Italy and NYC don’t paint such a rosy picture though. While deaths are rare, it’s still a very nasty disease for many younger people, and we don’t have much data yet on potential long term effects.

[thu2111]

No, we don't, but what people are interested in here is the lockdowns and when they can end - totally or partly.

The hospitalisations of young people all so far appear to be exceptional cases. This is also true of the reports of "fully healthy people". So far every case I'm aware of like that has turned out to be a lie. It implies the lockdowns could be restricted to the elderly and the frail.

In one case in the UK a woman under 40 was admitted to ICU with no pre-existing health conditions. Worrying, right? She'd been taking 8 ibuprofen a day. Ibuprofen suppresses the immune system and 8 per day is a staggeringly high overdose. The maximum dose for an adult is 4 per day so she was killing her immune system completely.

In another case there was a death of a young person in Spain, reported as no pre-existing conditions. After the death he was diagnosed with an unrecognised leukemia.

It's very likely given how extreme the statistical evidence is that basically all such cases have some sort of mitigating factor. Young people who are healthy and not doing stupid things don't seem to die or even get critically ill.

[danenania]

"The hospitalisations of young people all so far appear to be exceptional cases."

This is just wrong. The numbers are changing all the time, but as of a few days ago, 38% of hospitalized coronavirus patients in the US were between 20 and 54.

[asveikau]

People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong.

And exactly as you say: if there is a large population of infected people, the absolute number of people who fit in these small percentage tragedies is actually large.

[jen20]

> People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong.

This was proven by the response to the polls (especially the FiveThirtyEight one) in the 2016 presidential election, surely?

[lgleason]

It may be inevitable either way. 100 years ago life expectancy was 46 years. Today it is well into the 70's. Before that, for most of human history that rate was much lower. Up until now, for the past 80 years (post antibiotics) the human race has been really lucky, but perhaps nature is deciding something different. I hope not, but I do wonder.

[asveikau]

I'm not sure what that has to do with my observation that "small percentage" events do occur in small percentages, and that they do occur in large absolute numbers when multiplied by sufficiently large numbers. My point is we shouldn't be dismissive about it not going to happen to "us", because it will happen to nonzero amounts of "us", and that's kind of the point of the mathematical reasoning.

But to your point: Someone else is disputing you on this, but I would say even that it's irrelevant what life expectancy was 100 years ago. Today in the present reality we are talking about mostly preventable death. I don't think we should be so arrogant to say that we can prevent misfortune all the time, but we're not talking about inevitability either. We have medical technology and progress for a reason.

[Kaiyou]

It has been refuted already, that the life expectancy was this low, with the explanation for the error being given as stillbirths affecting the average.

As far as I know, even 500 years ago it wouldn't have been that difficult to reach age 70 once you've survived your childhood.

[newyankee]

True, but it is important to highlight that outliers exist. People should understand that better to err on the side of caution.

Fear will only subside long time after fatigue creeps in, but before that no of cases should plateau.

[CathedralBorrow]

If anecdotes like these succeed in making people take the problem seriously, was it still irrelevant information?

[defertoreptar]

It could mean people who would be going give blood or provide essential services at their job refuse to out of irrational fear.

[jamesrcole]

Handfuls of cases are enough to discredit the belief (perhaps not common on HN, but common in many other places) that young people can’t get seriously ill or die from it.

[Kaiyou]

Young people can die in a car crash, too, but that doesn't prevent most people from driving anyway. As long as it's only a small chance, nobody will pay it any mind and keep agreeing, that young people won't die from this.

I mean, there are even cases of young people just randomly dying without any visible cause. Yes, not only the elderly can die just like that. No one really pays this any mind either.

[dahart]

There haven't been any common beliefs or narratives that young people couldn't die from driving or couldn't die without visible causes. On the contrary, the common narrative about driving is that young people are disproporionately dying due to inexperience and reckless behavior, and this narrative is true, more young people die in car crashes than old people. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teena...

There have been reports that young people without other complications are not dying from coronavirus. That's why reports of someone young and healthy dying of COVID are getting attention, because it runs contrary to what has been widely reported.

[smarri]

Alternatively it could be a material and relevant fact.

[pelario]

On the other hand; the fact that such (very rare) cases exist is also revealing that there we are talking about actual large numbers.

[lgleason]

In the US, 33,000 people a year die in car accidents. That is an actual large number. But statistically there are other factors that determine the likelihood that you will be in that accident and for most statistically it is a low number, or low enough to be considered an acceptable risk.

Sure an individual story of a horrific crash, the pain and suffering is heart wrenching. News outlets love to play that up. Yes, it could also be you, but when you put it into a larger picture it tells a different story.

Then there are the stories of airplane crashes. They get massive coverage yet, statistically, planes are safer than being in a car.

[dahart]

It is relevant information when the previous narrative was that 0 young people had died of COVID, and that the “only” old people who had died had co-morbidity factors.

BTW, this isn’t “anecdotal evidence”. This is an actual, verifiable data point.

[LanceH]

Maybe doctor's and research scientists should present this as a data point instead of instead of yorkshirecoastradio relaying some facebook posts.

While this narrative may fit what is perceived as a good cause, do we want it at the expense of truth? Do we want every story to first be questioned, "what are they trying to get us to do by telling us this?"

[dahart]

> do we want it at the expense of truth?

I’m confused by that, what do you mean? What here is untrue? What is the “truth” that should be reported here? Someone died of COVID, someone who was young and didn’t have other health factors, which is abnormal compared to what we’ve heard about nearly all other cases of COVID death so far.

Nobody claimed this is somehow a huge number of cases, and I think it’s well understood - and not being challenged here — that old people and sick people have much, much higher risk factors for dying of Coronavirus.

But isn’t it worth knowing that the risk distribution does not start at 70 years old, that it starts at 18 and goes up?

[mbeex]

> Someone died of COVID

possibly

> and didn’t have other health factors

an aunt is saying so

> who was young

the only thing that can be regarded as certain

[dahart]

Have you put this level of skepticism on the news reports about old people dying?

Those details will be proven true or untrue by more official sources, and probably today. My point was not that I know they're true, it's that they are facts that can be checked. But I have no specific reason to be more skeptical of this report than of any other COVID deaths I've read about, do you?

[thu2111]

Yes. Such reports also deserve to be examined skeptically.

The big problem surfacing at the moment is deaths being reported as 'caused by covid' when they're in reality deaths that were about to happen anyway, and the victim happened to be infected e.g. cancer sufferers who were already in terminal decline.

There's increasing evidence that the excess death rate - deaths that truly wouldn't have happened if not for COVID - might be nearly zero.

[andrewzah]

> Do we want every story to first be questioned, "what are they trying to get us to do by telling us this?"

This should already be the standard operating procedure.

[zaroth]

Anecdotal doesn’t mean a lie. Anecdotal means n=1, or more broadly, trying to extrapolate from a narrow sample to draw a broad conclusion. This meets the exact definition of anecdotal.

You’ve moved the goalposts to say that if it kills even one young person then young people generally are at risk. The claim was never that zero young people have died. Just vanishingly few.

DR. BIRX (March 23, 2020):

"In the mortality data that has been provided to us, there has been no child under 15 that has succumbed to the virus in Europe. There was the one 14-year-old in China. So we still see that there is less severity in children, and so that should be reassuring to the moms and dads out there.

To Generation Z and to my millennial colleagues who have been really at the forefront of many of these responses: Less than 1 percent of all the mortality is less than 50. And so this is, I think, also a very important point.

That doesn’t mean that individuals won’t have severe disease. So still 99 percent of all the mortality coming out of Europe, in general, is over 50, and preexisting conditions. The preexisting condition piece still holds in Italy, with the majority of the mortality having three or more preexisting conditions."

[dahart]

> Anecdotal means n=1

No, that is incorrect. It has nothing to do with the size of the sample.

"Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes: evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

"Anecdotal" also means data that is not verifiable. In this case, the data is verifiable even if the news spread via Facebook.

> trying to extrapolate from a narrow sample to draw a broad conclusion. [...] You've moved the goalposts to say that if it kills even one young person then young people are generally at risk.

I did not draw a broad conclusion, I stated clearly in this thread that this is one sample, and old people are at much higher risk. So did the article. You are constructing a straw man argument that doesn't accurately reflect or counter my point of view.

[zaroth]

As long as your view is that young people are at vanishingly low risk of dying from this disease, and that individual reports of young people dying are essentially irrelevant and a play on emotions, than I suppose we vehemently agree on the facts.

Whether zero people worldwide under 15 have died or 10 people worldwide under 15 have died doesn’t meaningfully change the obvious conclusion, when the number of cases is several hundred thousand.

It seemed like you were saying that one child dying from COVID was relevant because someone claimed zero children died. Anyone claiming literally zero children have died from COVID are uninformed. The fact remains that children almost universally do not die from COVID.