COVID-19 and risk

 

Guest post by PatD:

CDC recently updated estimated infection fatality rates for COVID. Here are the updated survival rates by age group:

0-19: 99.997%

20-49: 99.98%

50-69: 99.5% 

70+: 94.6%

Remember also that 94% of the fatalities had other morbidities, such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, according to the CDC. 

If you are old like me, or our overweight President, you face a greater risk, but, for most people the chances of dying from COVID-19 are minimal. Yet, we are destroying the lives of children by keeping schools shut down for most of the year. We are destroying countless small businesses for a virus that is less deadly than the flu. We have shut down live sports and entertainment for no good reason.

We all know of people who have died with COVID-19. But we know of far more people who have died from other causes, such as traffic accidents, drowning, murder, cancer, heart disease and so on. The problem is we not balancing out the risk factors.

For example, we lose 37,000 people a year in traffic accidents. From 1899 to 2013, it is estimated 3.6 million people died in traffic accidents. Unlike COVID-19, people will continue to die in traffic accidents for the foreseeable future. If we cut the speed limit to 15 mph and require vehicles to be limited to a top speed of 15 mph, we would just about eliminate those deaths. But society won't do that. The convenience and time savings from much higher speed limits outweigh the risk of dying in a traffic accident.

The treatment the President received was little different from that received by most hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The only difference was that he was given an experimental therapeutic that is not yet approved for general use. Our healthcare system has learned a lot since March and the death rates are dropping as better therapies are used to treat patients. 

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