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Comment by vermilingua | Hacker News Reader

There’s no hard data to support this claim, only anecdotes from the beginning of the first wave.

Here are a couple of links from the CDC. You listen to too much news if you think that young people are at risk. For [0] you should do weekly deaths by age. You'll see that under 25 people are dying at the lowest rate in the past 5 years. For 26-45 you can bet your bottom dollar that the minor bump above is the 40-45 range.

[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm [1] - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...

If you get it, regardless of your age, there's a relatively high probability that you will directly and indirectly infect enough people to kill at least one person. I don't want that responsibility on my conscience.

Also, while the data on this for for COVID-19 is obviously limited at this point, the long-term impacts of SARS and MERS on cardiovascular health [0] are concerning. I wouldn't be surprised if getting it knocks a couple years off of life expectancy for a 25 year old.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000629522...

"As shown, deaths in young people (from babies to college students) are almost non-existent. The first age group to provide a substantial contribution to the death toll is 45-54 years, who contribute nearly 5% of all coronavirus deaths. More than 80% of deaths occur in people aged 65 and over. That increases to over 92% if the 55-64 age group is included."

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-death...

"The estimated IFR is close to zero for younger adults but rises exponentially with age, reaching about 0.3% for ages 50-59, 1.3% for ages 60-69, 4% for ages 70-79, 10% for ages 80-89."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v...

"Our estimated overall infection fatality ratio for China was 0·66% (0·39–1·33), with an increasing profile with age."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

"Among the 0-4 year, 5-17 year, 18-49 year, 50-64 year, and ≥ 65 year age groups, the highest rate of hospitalization was among adults aged ≥ 65 years, followed by adults aged 50-64 years and adults aged 18-49 years."

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi...

CDC infographic showing clearly that hospitalization and death are both strongly associated with age:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...

"The paper found that the fatality rate gradually increases with age. For example, there were no deaths among children aged nine or younger while it stood at 0.2 percent for people aged between 10 and 39. It increased to 3.6 percent in the 60-69 age bracket before rising to 8 percent among those aged 70 to 79 and 14.8 percent among people in their 80s or older."

https://www.statista.com/chart/20860/coronavirus-fatality-ra...

...and on, and on and on. There is so much data supporting the OP's statement that you have to be trying to ignore it.

I see it differently. Yes, young people are much less likely to have a serious illness from COVID. But, there are still young people who will die from COVID (the death rate is not zero for 0-18yrs old even without preexisting conditions). For those young people, it is death. To say, "you young person, you'll be fine". Is inaccurate. To say, you will most likely be fine. Yeah, sure that's accurate, but some of those people will actually die. Let's not candy coat that. Death is permanent and awful.

There are still young people that die from driving a car, or getting pneumonia. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here

If you just sit out a year and be more careful, you just might not die from something we all are aware of?

Also isn't also the problem, that people who have light symptoms and are very active are super spreaders?

Could you rephrase?

"Yes, young people are much less likely to have a serious illness from COVID. But, there are still young people who will die from COVID (the death rate is not zero for 0-18yrs old even without preexisting conditions). For those young people, it is death."

You may believe this to be true, but your sense of risk is ridiculously out of proportion to the actual risk involved. In the US, fewer than 300 people under the age of 25 have died from Covid:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

During the same period that those 300 kids died of covid, literally thousands died of all other causes.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-death...

For those young people, of course, death is also death. More young people have died this year from accidents than have died from Covid.

It seems like the much more likely and scary scenario for young people (myself included) is long term health problems that are difficult or impossible to treat and basically destroy your quality of life.

I was curious if you have done any research on that? I keep hoping to find something to put my mind at ease.

Agreed, theres way too much focus on death rate for under 40.

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