I was scanning Yahoo (Jun 18) and came across an interesting article about declining deaths due to coronavirus. One of my daily web surfing duties is to check out Worldometer and I've definitely noticed that the US deaths during the first half of June were coming in below 1,000 per day. The journalist of this article points out that the lower deaths is being driven by a demographic shift in who is getting infected. That is, younger people are now more likely to test positive for the virus:
There is some data to support this theory. In March, the median age of all Floridians who tested positive for COVID-19 was around 60; since then, the median age has fallen to about 35. A full three-quarters of Florida residents with COVID-19 are now younger than 50.
In Arizona, meanwhile, residents under 45 accounted for about 40 percent of all COVID-19 cases two months ago. Today they represent more than 56 percent of the state’s cases.
Similar trend lines are emerging in Texas, Georgia, California and other states. In Georgia, 53 percent of new cases on June 16 were of people under 40 years old, up from 34.5 percent on June 2. In California, the share of people under 35 with COVID-19 has increased by 15 percentage points over the last month (to 44 percent), while the share of cases over 50 has fallen by the same amount (to 30 percent).
Now the writer does point out a caveat to his report, which is that cases in some of these states have been rising, but there is a delay between when someone come down with the virus and when someone dies from the virus.
Yet, I think we've long known that young people are less likely to die from the virus. If you scroll down this link, you'll see a bar chart that has the CFR % by age bracket for South Korea, Spain, China and Italy. For those between the ages of 20 to 49, the CFR % ranges from 0.11% to 0.4%. Even for the 50 - 59 bracket the CFR % is between 0.4% and 1.3%. The IFR % for even the 50 - 59 bracket is likely less than 1.0%.
BUT YOUNGER PEOPLE ARE STILL ENDING UP IN THE HOSPITAL
Now just because you aren't going to die from this virus doesn't mean there aren't complications.
The Texas Tribune (Jun 16) reports:
In Travis County and the city of Austin, the median age of all positive cases has ticked downward to 38 years old this week, from 39 years old last week. Twenty- to 29-year-olds make up 24% of all cases in the area and 8.3% of the hospitalizations.
As for Dallas County, the trend is reflected in hospitalizations rather than new cases. Almost a month ago, on May 19, 18% of all people hospitalized were between the ages of 18 and 40, the age range used by local officials to designate young adults. On Tuesday, that age group made up 21% of hospitalizations.
Dr. David Persse, public health authority for the Houston Health Department, said the same trend is materializing in Harris County. Overall, 17.5% of all people impacted in that area are people in their 20s.
LONG TERM HEALTH ISSUES FOR THOSE WHO SURVIVE
Vox (Jun 12) has an article that describes the various health problems for those who survive the virus. The health problems range from lung scarring to strokes to heart damage to mental problems and even fertility issues. Here's a quote about lung damage:
One study from China found that this ground-glass appearance showed up in scans of 77 percent of Covid-19 patients. In another study out of China, published in Radiology, 66 of 70 hospitalized patients had some amount of lung damage in CT scans, and more than half had the kind of lesions that are likely to develop into scars. (A third study from China suggests this is not just for critically ill patients; its authors found that of 58 asymptomatic patients, 95 percent also had evidence of these ground-glass opacities in their lungs. More than a quarter of these individuals went on to develop symptoms within a few days.)
“These kinds of tissue changes can cause permanent damage,” says Ali Gholamrezanezhad, a radiologist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California . . . Gholamrezanezhad has recently done a literature review of SARS and MERS and says that for this subset of people, “The pulmonary function never comes back; their ability to do normal activities never goes back to baseline.”
The reason why Gholamrezanezhad discusses SARS and MERS is because these are also coronaviruses.
I do wish the Vox article discussed demographics breakdowns, but when you're talking percentages ranging from 77% to 95%, you're definitely having to talk about all age brackets.
There's also this Dutch News (Jun 12) report:
People who have been infected with coronavirus but were not admitted to hospital are struggling with severe effects on their health months after first falling ill, a survey by the respiratory disease organisation Longfonds has shown. Some 95% of the 1,600 respondents, of whom 91% were not admitted to hospital and 43% were never officially diagnosed, said they have trouble with normal day to day activities three months after being infected. Persisting symptoms include tiredness, shortness of breath, headaches, muscle pain and heart palpitations. The average age of the respondents is 53.
Once again, I wish there was a demographics breakdown. I clicked on one of the links and didn't see any specific breakdowns. I'm sure there is a research paper that discusses those breakdowns. I will say notice that the average age of 53 is in the age bracket where the IFR % is likely below 1%.
To me, the one problem with this survey is that you don't know if the people taking the survey actually got infected and it doesn't appear like they were checked out by a medical professional. Yet, the fact that 95% has health issues after recovery should be seen as concerning.
I'm not a health expert when it comes to diseases. I'm just interesting in this pandemic, but I do wonder if COVID-19 may go down one day as this generation's polio.
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