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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Especially once you consider all of the pre-existing conditions that make you ineligible to be in the military.

this is a really good point. AFAIK, 100% of the canonical pre-existing conditions which are highly dangerous with COVID are disqualifiers for joining the military.

this cohort will give us a much better picture of how the virus impacts a totally healthy and young population. as with countless other pieces of evidence, it should also help to put the "it's just a flu bro" falsehood to bed.

Does the mortality rate across entire population (not particular subpopulations) exceed that of the flu?

Almost certainly. The US had 27k deaths in the past two weeks. That's more than some entire years of flu related deaths. Give it another few weeks and it will be more than any recent year.

Yes. Current understanding of the mortality rate is that it’s roughly 10x more lethal than the flu across all age demographics. This means you might only have a 0.2% of dying as a 20 year old, but you only had a 0.02% chance of dying of the flu.

The caveat is that mortality rate is intimately tied with the availability of certain types of care; if you need a vent and the hospital is full, you die even if otherwise you would’ve lived. Thus case mortality rate will change dramatically once the hospitals fill up.

I don't think that's true. covid has stronger age dependence. Just look at the ratio of covid vs. influenza deaths on the CDC's website (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm). 3:1 covid:flu for over 85, but 1:1 for 25-35 and 1:10 for children. (relative ratios as we don't know total covid infections).

This is especially striking with children: if the US had the same number of covid infections as seasonal flu, you'd probably have lower pediatric deaths from covid than flu.

These statistics don’t support that conclusion, because these statistics are for total deaths. You can’t meaningfully compare the total deaths from a disease that’s done for the season (Flu) with one that’s still on going (COVID-19).

What you should be comparing is case fatality rates.

But can you not compare the ratios between age groups? That's all I'm doing here - showing deaths have a higher age correlation with covid than flu. - not making any statement about absolute CFR/IFR.

No, because you don’t know what the infection rate is by each demographic.

You have to compare just the case fatality rate. Comparing fatality ratios alone is too likely to measure unrelated factors.

It's more likely that cases/infections is skewed by age, because we test severe cases more than mild cases, than infections as a whole is skewed by age. Assuming infections are uniformly distributed, or rather have a similar distribution to the flu, seems entirely reasonable until we have good data suggesting otherwise.

There is no reason to believe that infections aren’t skewed by age. We took a wide range of preventative measures that are completely unique within living memory, such as closing down most schools and colleges. Until we’ve actually done statistical analysis on who got sick, any predictions based on historical trends are largely invalid.

Sure, but there is also no reason to believe that they are. There is however very good reason to believe that testing is skewed by age.

Fair enough, but would there be a reason it would be different? And even if it were, is that actually relevant?

Anyway, here's some IFR estimations for covid by Imperial college: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

You see significantly higher multipliers by age group than for flu. As one example, they are guessing teenagers have 1/17th the mortality rate of say a 40 year old. For flu (going by deaths), it's about 1/5th.

There is absolutely plenty of reason for the infection rate to be different by demographic: we closed schools down. We don’t do that for the flu.

We also don't Shelter in place for flu. Bay Area school closure date is 1 day before SIP.

Sweden and Iceland never closed schools for young kids. Data doesn't look any different.

That’s a good argument.

Sweden has a substantially higher case fatality rate for COVID-19 compared to other industrialized nations, so it's an interesting case.

"AFAIK, 100% of the canonical pre-existing conditions which are highly dangerous with COVID are disqualifiers for joining the military."

Including being "old".

Disqualified from signing up, but you can age surely?

I thought that smokers had elevated risks too, are smokers allowed in the military? As far as I can tell they are.

On average, people who start out older tend to end up older, after a given period of time. That's my theory, at least.

> Disqualified from signing up, but you can age surely?

To an extent. The US military caps military service at 30 years (20 for reserve officers), last I checked. So if you enlisted at 35 (right at the cutoff for the usual maximum age to enlist), you'd be forced to retire at 65, whereas if you enlisted at 17, you'd be forced to retire at 47. 65 (IIRC) is right on the edge of when age starts becoming a significant risk factor; for the vast majority of military personnel, it ain't gonna be a factor.

There are of course exceptions to this based on rank or specialization; for example, had my grandpa been promoted to General, he would've been able to serve longer, but he wasn't selected for the promotion so he aged out as a Colonel (or at least that's how he explained it to me).

Majority on the ship are going to be under 40. Most people start their military careers between 18 and 22, and most people leave at it before 20 years of service.

Squadron commanders, senior medical officer, Dept heads and the CO and Admiral would most likely be in their forties or early fifties.

Good point, yes, but I bet that Gulf war soldiers where also extra-healthy when they enlisted. Not so much when they returned home.

Army, is an activity with lots of health risks, chemicals and strange diseases exposure attached. Not the best choice if you expect to live for one hundred years.

That reminded me of an Army recruiter well known for his “tactics”. People close describes him as a “Car salesman “. Apparently, is very good at making sure the candidate doesn’t change his/her mind.

I think we should also consider that some members of the military depending on their duties get exposed to chemicals that the civilian pop don’t get exposed to at the same levels.

Or at all. Most of us will never come within contact with TNT during our life, while most military members will be exposed to its residue constantly.

There are a lot of people who have pre existing conditions and have no idea, even in the military. There was a marine recruit who died during basic training because of a heart defect, it wasn't an issue his whole life and it didn't come up as a problem during the in depth physical you get before hand.

Sure but that is irrelevant. It is absolutely certain that the rate of most diseases associated with increased Covid19 risks is much lower in the active army than in the general population, even if it is not 0.

Existence doesn't exclude filtering beyond filtering every case

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