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Comment by anewguy9000 | Hacker News Reader

honest question: what is the death rate for an average person in their 80s?

ie: if you have cov2 you have a 7% chance of dying from it but dont you already have say a 50% chance of dying in your 80s anyway?

to be strictly logical and not emotional about this moral question: are we unhinging society (effects we cannot begin to calculate) to keep the fatality rate for the population 80+ at 50% instead of 57%?

in terms of costs to the healthcare system, might this equate to a net relief if the peak were accelerated instead of flattened?

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> honest question: what is the death rate for an average person in their 80s?

That's a standard actuarial problem, answered with life tables (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_03.pdf -- pdf, US 2008). In said life tables, there is a 7% death rate between ages 83 and 84.

To an order-of-magnitude approximation, infection with the novel coronavirus seems to impose roughly one year's worth of mortality risk on the victim.

That’s not an entirely fair assessment given that most people dying from Covid-19 have other serious health issues.

It’d be interesting to see how many healthy 80+ year olds have died.

Mortality rates are freely available: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

There's a ~6% chance of dying during the year you turned 80. That chance goes up dramatically every year you get older. By 85 it's nearly 10%.

It would be interesting to calculate how this virus changes those rates. I feel like these kind of analysis are completely lacking in any reporting.

It's not only about the old people. There are enough younger people that need medical care, even if they don't die from it.

And then it's also about the rest of the population that needs medical attention for a different reason.

Imagine the medicial facilities being flooded by COVID-19 patients. There are enough severe cases already in many countries that non essential operations are suspended.

Good luck getting adequate treatment for your broken leg.

so if you have flu like symptoms are you going to the hospital now? the vast majority of cov2 cases result in mild flu like symptoms and only 25% of the severe cases require medical intervention (according to WHO). so shouldnt the advice be to not seek medical attention at all? if you need the medical intervention youre in the 80 plus cohort that is already "flooding medical facilities" (been in one lately?). im just trying to do the long division and work out the logic that leads to the conclusion we should gamble with the livlihoods of huge percentage of the population for 7% mortality reduction in seniors. couldnt the exact same effect be achieved by quarantining seniors?

I mean, this is what the UK is going to try. We will see how successful it is. I am not optimistic.

You have to remember that these fatality rates are with treatment, and old people will experience roughly 2 years of death rates within a few months in that case, leading to massive numbers of hospitalizations. That case load is absolutely not normal regardless of who's driving it. What's your plan exactly -- deny treatment to old people who have COVID-19? Not only will that increase death rates substantially, it's horrible.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/coronavirus-model-shows-...

And all of that is ignoring the possibility of people suffering nonfatal chronic health problems, which has been reported.

Meanwhile, remdesivir and lopinavir/ritonavir are in trials and once we actually have drugs available the hospitalizations would be shorter and the death rates much lower. At that point quarantine becomes less important.

Here are the death probabilities for males in their 80s based on the 2016 social security life table:

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

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