[fastball]

Yes but not in the way you're implying.

A child dying robs them and the world of 60+ years of human life. An 80 year old dying of COVID-19 was not going to live much longer anyway, so the loss is less severe. Old people have already had the opportunity to live a "full" life.

Imagine two societies – one where a disease kills 50% of < 10s every year, and another that kills 50% of > 70s every year. Which society would do better? Which society would you rather live in?

[soperj]

In the US, more people in the 55-74 age range have died than the 85+. Those are people who are taking care of grand children, or are still working. These are people that society has spent decades making fully functioning parts of society. A child has had none of that investment.

A society of just children wouldn't work, just as a society without wouldn't work.

[fastball]

Is your goal to just be as misleading as possible in this conversation?

Yes, of course more 55-74s have died – there are far, far more of them than there are >85s. Normalized, COVID is far more lethal (8x more lethal) for >85s than for your range. Here's the mortality rates:

55-74: 0.28%

85+: 2.5%

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

[soperj]

How in any way is that misleading?

The actual numbers are more representative than lethality percentages when we're talking about contribution to society.

[StavrosK]

What's more representative is "life years lost", and malaria wins there (we've lost many more years to it).

[soperj]

How do you calculate that in an area of the world with the highest rate of child mortality?

[StavrosK]

Same as in any other area, assume malaria isn't killing babies and do the math. Your question sounds rhetorical but is too simple to answer, so I'm confused.