Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

Anecdotally, my parents keep bringing up this narrative every time we talk on the phone. I've reminded them that while me and my fiance dutifully haven't left the house since last Sunday they've happily gone to the grocery store multiple times, attended a funeral, and had wine at their neighbor's house. They also refused to stop babysitting my niece and nephew until I called my brother and convinced him to stop dropping them off. But no, young people are the reckless ones.

True, but it is important to highlight that outliers exist. People should understand that better to err on the side of caution.

Fear will only subside long time after fatigue creeps in, but before that no of cases should plateau.

We’re also dealing with the fallout of living in a “post-truth” era, where we as a society can no longer agree with basic facts.

Yes, it’s exceedingly rare to see a case like this, but what’s not rare is seeing the examples of people not taking this disease seriously, even some public officials.

Getting people to cooperate with drastic disease mitigation efforts won’t happen if there’s a probability embedded in that headline. People are doing that in their heads already when they think “this can’t happen to me, so let’s all go to the beach today.”

Handfuls of cases are enough to discredit the belief (perhaps not common on HN, but common in many other places) that young people can’t get seriously ill or die from it.

Alternatively it could be a material and relevant fact.

It is relevant information when the previous narrative was that 0 young people had died of COVID, and that the “only” old people who had died had co-morbidity factors.

BTW, this isn’t “anecdotal evidence”. This is an actual, verifiable data point.

If anecdotes like these succeed in making people take the problem seriously, was it still irrelevant information?

People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong.

And exactly as you say: if there is a large population of infected people, the absolute number of people who fit in these small percentage tragedies is actually large.

On the other hand; the fact that such (very rare) cases exist is also revealing that there we are talking about actual large numbers.

Fear sells. This is tragic, but the exception to the rule.

To add some weight to your argument, the official stats from italy offer clear data [1]:

- 1.1% of deaths in Italy < 50 years old

- No deaths < 30

- 99% with comorbidities, 75% with at least 2 comorbidities.

[1] https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...

It is trying to counter misconceptions that COVID-19 is harmless to young healthy people based on misinterpretations of guidance that elderly and those with preexisting conditions are most at risk. Just because younger people are at less risk doesn't mean they have no risk. While the numbers have been hard to pin down, early data from China showed that more than 10% of people in their 20s-40s with the disease had critical cases. Some other studies outside China have put that number at 15-20%. The number of severe cases is much less, but not 0.

With proper treatment nearly all of those critical cases will survive. But if the health care system becomes overwhelmed that may no longer be true.

It is trying to sink in the idea that young people are not invincible to COVID-19 and that they need to practice social distancing, if not for the benefit of society as a whole, then for their own self benefit.

But I don’t think people have been hammered with the view that flu can only kill older people. Whereas they have been for covid-19.

On what planet is someone in their late 30s-40s considered young? 40s is prime midlife crisis age for crying out loud. Lumping them in is a clear attempt to push a narrative.

A 13 year old died in Panama on Monday, but again, no confirmation on her health from a doctor.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/panama-13-year-girl-c...

> this is the first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease

It may be the first one that’s been in the news here, but what about in China? I’m wondering if there have been any cases there, that haven't been officially reported in the news.

The whistleblower doctor who died was only 34. I don't know if he had any prexisting conditions. https://nypost.com/2020/02/09/coronavirus-doctor-li-wenliang...

While we're here because it mentions a younger death, it is way less about your (or my) chances and more about where we will spread it. At this point, I have seen it first hand, a spring breaker coming back, carrying it for a few days, and interacting with many people in office settings.

Just because the virus doesn't kill doesn't mean you aren't being used.

> that's on the order of a .001% chance of dying.

Not exactly, there's factors pushing that way down, and some up.

We shouldn't look at [mortality /infected numbers], but rather at [mortality / resolved cases]. Given the exponential growth, most infected occurred very recently, and their death may still be pending, bound to occur in the coming weeks. For example, suppose an infection takes 1 month to resolve. If in January 100 get infected, in February 1000, and in February all the 100 infected from January have died, the mortality rate isn't 100/1100, it's 100/100.

Instead, looking at just the resolved numbers: either death, or recovery, are more accurate. This is still not fully reliable given the cases resolving in death or recovery may have different timing, but it's better than just looking at gross infected rates. This pushes up the 0.001% figure.

More importantly though, our infected numbers are way, way off. Probably 10 times higher. Most countries only test people who are hospitalised. The rest must stay home. There's no country that I know of that is going to people's homes to test people at scale. And there's only a few countries with a drive-through testing kind of model. Given there is evidence that substantial percentages (perhaps 50%) are asymptomatic, and that weak and mild cases aren't being tested either, the true infected numbers are way worse. (which pushes down your 0.001% figure).

This is not even close to "first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease", even though such diagnosed & reported cases are relatively rare.

Even if you like those "very good odds", do you really think it is smart to risk playing Russian Roulette at 1/1000 odds for a pizza party?

More critically, even if you like those odds, all the people you meet when you fail to maintain distance, wear PPE, etc. did NOT knowingly decide that those odds are OK for them.

The hospital resources consumed by you or those you unwittingly expose will also prevent treatment of many completely unrelated accidents & health issues, e.g., we now have examples like neurologists staffing ERs, which means their neuro patients get punted.

The sense of perspective to maintain is not "this isn't a big deal", but that this is an exponentially growing deadly threat to a significant portion of the population, and every person even those at minimal personal risk to themselves need to take on the larger responsibility of helping the society survive.

The survival rate with treatment isn’t the important factor though, it’s survival rate without treatment. If you show up at the hospital with covid and there aren’t any ventilators or beds for you, you’re rolling the dice whether you’re 17 or 70.

Or maybe you’re diligent and you haven’t left the home in weeks and one day you slip and fall in the bathtub and break a bone. How long until an ambulance shows up, if at all? How long until you have surgery, if at all? And then you catch covid anyway.

Yeah. No known preexisting conditions is very different from no preexisting conditions. That being said, it's certainly possible that she was just unlucky and the virus hit her harder than normal for people her age, or she caught some other bug at the same time.

Somewhat distantly related, have you seen https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fjzjpc/relationshi... ? (also see the old sars paper my comment cites and the surrounding thread)

It could also inform people to help them make decisions. IE: if they are more at risk they take more precautions and vise-versa.

Trying to understand the risk factors is not blame.

Huh? It's well documented by now that comorbidities increase the risk of death from COVID considerably. Articles like this make the news because they're fighting the myth that the young and healthy cannot die from it.

It's not victim blaming. It's trying to ascertain whether or not young people that don't have a health condition are at critical risk of dying if they catch the disease, which until this story, many believed they were not.

If they already have something like a compromised immune system and die from the coronavirus, then it's not really surprising. if they were perfectly healthy, it's a bit more interesting.

> By blaming the person for succumbing to the virus

Intelligent people just want to know how severe the corona virus is, and what the risk factors are.

I can't speak for other people. :)

I was reading about the 1918 Spanish Flu (H1N1) today, and it sounds a lot like severe corona virus - blood frothing from lungs.

I don't think it's about blaming the victim this time. Instead I think it's about being able to say to oneself, "well, unlike them, I'm basically healthy, so I don't have to fear that the same will happen to me."

It's probably not wise, but it's very understandable.

I don't think that's it at all. It's the 'normal' person being concerned whether they are at risk.

While lots of people 'know old people' or with pre-existing conditions, many people have youngish parent with already passed grandparents, who have trouble understanding why this is a fuss for them, since they imagine that it'll just be a cold (for them). Cases like this one are 'scary' because it shows that they might still be at risk. Which, in some sense, is good if it makes 'normal people' scared enough to actually stay home/self-quarantine.

I really don't think this has anything to do with the "US-centric mindset of blaming people for their own [snipped]".

The answer being sought is just how deadly is this virus? Knowing that helps everyone plan, and thus far, mortality rates haven't been very high at all except in very vulnerable populations.

However, should the virus mutate, or otherwise start posing a larger problem to the general public, the calculus of just how under-prepared are we radically changes.

It has nothing to do with blame and everything to do with dealing with the reality of the pandemic. Are we facing an extremely contagious flu, or are we facing an extremely contagious 1918 / Spanish flu? There is a pretty serious difference between the two in terms of preparedness needed.

Reminds me of the questions people make here in mexico when someone gets murdered: was he in drugs? Was he in as bad place? Surely he was onto something? Was he showing off?

Human brains have to justify things to try to disassociate the bad events with their reality. It is difficult to accept that calamity is very close to them.

Usually I'd agree that focusing on pre-existing conditions is victim-blaming, but in this case there's a nasty braid of fear:

* Some young people believe they're immune and don't care if they spread the disease. Spring break in Florida.

* Some old people are envious of this and looking for reasons it isn't true.

* Other old people are scared for their offspring and ready for their fears to be confirmed.

* Health officials are selling the story that young people are in more danger than we thought to try to convince them to stay home. Again, spring break in Florida.

* Media outlets focus on the rare youth deaths because the above factors drive clicks.

The data from China is pretty clear. Young people rarely notice having COVID, and that even among symptomatic cases the level of death is incredibly low. I know we're all skeptical of Chinese government numbers but their total lockdown and testing regime gives them the unequaled opportunity to say "everybody in this town was exposed, absolutely every person, and here's how things came out." They're the only country in a position to definitively comment on asymptomatic cases.

It's hard to see why they'd fake a risk curve that increases very slowly through young years and then swoops upward in middle age. Something about the Chinese respect for elders? I can't see it.

Here in the West, you get a half-dozen articles about one 21-year-old who died and appears to have had no pre-existing conditions, a similar number about some doctor who died or priest who refused a ventilator, and no articles detailing each of the thousands of older people who are dying.

Our culture is trying to believe that young people are vulnerable. We "want" a more even risk curve.

So... is this ok? We have a weird circumstance where the usual bad science is serving a public health purpose by propagating a probable untruth. Meanwhile, the "everything's fine, it's just the flu" side is working as hard as possible to spread a different untruth that is very dangerous to public health.

Is it morally defensible to tell people on the internet that young people are almost all going to be fine? Not immune, but probably fine?

This is where many of you who are convinced that young people are in significantly more danger start speaking up. "Some young people do, this young person did, no pre-existing conditions, this article says half the deaths are under 50..."

If the population in general had the death rate that we've seen among young people this virus wouldn't be a big deal. That's what matters. Some young people will get sick and die but not in sufficient quantities to overwhelm the hospital and mortuary systems. The deaths of the middle-aged and old are what will paralyze our countries.

You probably won't know a young person who dies. You probably will know an old person who does.

We’ve certainly stigmatized the outbreak. Initially it was straight up racism against Asians, but now we’ve shifted to ‘well you must be an asshole’. It’s pretty standard modern day mutation of American ‘exceptionalism’.

Imagine the news was running a sensationalized story about "Man dies after drinking Diet Coke. Diet Coke can kill you!"

Except then the comments all point out that the man had PKU, and that Diet Coke won't will you unless you have PKU. And that virtually everybody who has PKU already knows they have it. That the typical person has nothing to worry about from Diet Coke.

Would you object to the comments pointing this out? Would you say they're blaming the person who died? Or would you just say that they're contextualizing a very important piece of information that the news is overlooking to sensationalize its story.

The pedant in me says technically the name of the virus "SARS-CoV-2" but lots of people are referring to the virus by the disease name of "COVID-19". Maybe that's why?

The pragmatic side of me says "Yeah, what the heck. It's clearly known"

Edit: Rereading it, the quote is directed at people who are skeptical of it's existence. So it makes sense in context.

Yeah, I think she's using "virus" colloquially to mean a not-very-serious virus such as the common cold. As in "Oh, she's just got a virus".

Occam's razor: what you've heard is simply incorrect.

More like COWEED-19

> highly unlikely but not impossible

Looking for something else to blame when you agree that it's "highly unlikely but not impossible" simply shows how unintuitive statistics are.

How many people are known to have COVID in the US? 55,000 officially, probably 3-10x that, let's say 100k for a nice round number.

Is 1 out of 100k a "highly unlikely but not impossible" chance? Sure. So you don't need to assume that there must be other causes in the absence of other evidence.

But how many people know they have no pre-existing conditions? Most of us are in the no known conditions camp.

On the other hand, there is evidence that some of the patients die due to an excessive response of the immune systen: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21176783/coronavirus-covid-19-...