Comment by catalogia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by catalogia | Hacker News Reader

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> If you are above 70 or have health problems, the mortality rate is extremely bad

According to this article (https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-death-age-older-...) an 80 year old has a 15% chance of dying. Is that actually "extremely bad" though? I think if 80 year old grandma got cancer and the doctors told you there was a 85% chance she'd recover, you might well breath a sigh of relief. For somebody that old, there are much worse mortality rates than that. Breaking your hip is more deadly than getting the coronavirus for people that old[0].

Rather the legitimate concern is due to how rapidly the disease is spreading. 15% is enough to kill TONS of people when you scale it up to the whole population. It's a high mortality rate considering the scope of the pandemic, but a relatively low mortality rate for the individual.

[0] "The risk of death in the year following a fracture is about 20% in older people." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_fracture

Well I was referring to people over 70 as a cohort, we are saying the same thing essentially.

On an individual level however, adding an illness with 15% mortality on top of all the other things over 80s can get is a big deal.

80+ year olds are a varied cohort, and some are reasonably healthy, with multiple years left to live. The hip fracture data is biased because frail people with other problems are more likely to fall.

> an 80 year old has a 15% chance of dying. Is that actually "extremely bad" though?

Yes.

Care to convince me?

How would you feel about being in a group of 7 of which one gets randomly shot?

How much money would I have to offer you that you took your chances?

Unnecessary deaths are worse than life threats you can't do anything about it.

> How would you feel about being in a group of 7 of which one gets randomly shot?

That depends on how old I am. If I'm in my 80s with a fulfilling life behind me, playing russian roulette would disturb me a lot less than if were a young adult with a potential life before me. From elsewhere in this thread, it seems like simply being that old in the first place is like playing russian roulette anyway (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22600562)

Now obviously in this case you'd be playing it twice instead of just once. But I hope that by the time I'm that old I've had enough time to come to terms with my mortality, write a will, make amends with family, etc. Because there are much worse prognosis's for somebody at that age than 15% mortality rate.

Or to look at this from another angle: 'extremely' bad is inherently relative. And taken relative to other common ailments people that old content with, I don't think 15% chance of death qualifies as 'extreme'. If 15% is 'extreme' then what adjective would you use for a cancer with a 50% mortality rate? "Super-dooper-uber extreme"?

> Or to look at this from another angle: 'extremely' bad is inherently relative. And taken relative to other common ailments people that old content with, I don't think 15% chance of death qualifies as 'extreme'. If 15% is 'extreme' then what adjective would you use for a cancer with a 50% mortality rate? "Super-dooper-uber extreme"?

You're missing the time frame. Getting cancer is a threat that many old people face but that's spread over decades.

With COVID-19, we face 70%-80% of the population being infected within a much shorter time, possibly a year or less (depending on how well or bad the delay measures are).

Yes, people die at that age for many reasons. But here, we have a potential death threat that is avertable and, most importantly, that affects the whole of society, not only old people.

Don't think that only old people get it and need medical attention. Lots of young people also need medical attention, even if they don't die from it. Ignoring long term effects from having caught it (as we don't know them yet), this alone would disrupt society. And then the secondary effects of people with other medical conditions not being treated as they are triaged.

Modern society doesn't need a lot to be disrupted. Look at how disruptive 9/11 was.

You guys are missing the point. It will be very difficult to access healthcare for the next 3 months because the system is going to be so overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases. There will be no available hospital beds.

Triage. I don't believe there will be any hospitals struggling to find hospital beds for young pregnant women because there are too many 80 year olds with corona.

Clearly this didn't go the way you suggest in the red zones in Italy.

In Wuhan pregnant women died because they couldn’t afford oxygen anymore before the government started paying for treatment

The other interesting metric will be: how many people in their 40s never work again?

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