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Comment by yread | Hacker News Reader

Stop spreading this. Median hospitalization age is 65. 40% of patients on icu are under 50. With the rates of hospitalization in 30-39 year olds no country would have enough icu beds even for them

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This looks correct. Here's the data https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm?s_cid=mm... Scroll down for TABLE. Hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and case–fatality percentages for reported COVID–19 cases, by age group —United States, February 12–March 16, 2020

Parent was referring to fatality rates and you instead presented hospitalization rates, why do you want them to stop spreading fatality rate information?

When hospitals are full, the fatality rate will approach the current hospitalization rate.

Gonna need to see some actual data. Median hospitalization age of 65 and then 40% of patients in the ICU being under 50 already doesn't even make any sense.

Sure it does. 40% under 50 years old means 60% are 50+ years old. The median is by definition the 50th percentile; aka, at least 50 years old and likely somewhat older, since more than half of all cases are in people who are 50+ years old. Median age being 65 aligns pretty well with that, given that 65 is somewhat above 50.

Maybe a moot question/point, but do we take into account patients in ICU that are unrelated to COVID? E.g. traffic accidents, workplace accidents, heart attacks, etc. I am not trying to spoil the discussion, and I do understand that medical services try to save all lives irrespective of age. So someone who's 80 and is down with COVID and someone who is 25 and fell from his Kawasaki doing 200km/h will each occupy a unit in ICU. That would skew the data.

(my bad, it's not easy to go through the slides on a phone)

Edit: by "skew" I imply mix the two categories COVID Vs "all other causes" and will give false average if we are trying to focus only on the COVID cases.

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