Young overweight people are not safe.
Young healthy people have never been at risk.
Young healthy people have never been at risk.
A more accurate way to phrase this is that young non-overweight people are at far less risk than young obese people. It's not true that young healthy people are at no risk.
From https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...:
Among 780969 adults discharged between April 1, 2020, and June 30, 2020, 63103 (8.1%) had the ICD-10 code for COVID-19, of whom 3222 (5%) were nonpregnant young adults (age 18-34 years) admitted to 419 US hospitals. The mean (SD) age of this population was 28.3 (4.4) years; 1849 (57.6%) were men and 1838 (57.0%) were Black or Hispanic. Overall, 1187 (36.8%) had obesity, 789 (24.5%) morbid obesity, 588 (18.2%) diabetes, and 519 (16.1%) hypertension (Table).
During hospitalization, 684 patients (21%) required intensive care, 331 (10%) required mechanical ventilation, and 88 (2.7%) died. Vasopressors or inotropes were used for 217 patients (7%), central venous catheters for 283 (9%), and arterial catheters for 192 (6%). The median length of stay was 4 days (interquartile range, 2-7 days). Among those who survived hospitalization, 99 (3%) were discharged to a postacute care facility.
Morbid obesity (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 2.30; 95% CI, 1.77-2.98; vs no obesity; P < .001) and hypertension (adjusted OR, 2.36; 95% CI, 1.79-3.12; P < .001) were common and in addition to male sex (adjusted OR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.20-1.95; P = .001) were associated with greater risk of death or mechanical ventilation. Odds of death or mechanical ventilation did not vary significantly with race and ethnicity. Morbid obesity was present in 140 patients (41%) who died or required ventilation.
So, 3222 / 780969 = 0.4% of the examined population had admission to a hospital with "Covid" on their forms. Of these, 343 died (0.04% of examined population; Table 1).
Obesity, hypertension and diabetes were strongly correlated with death in this population.
That's not "no risk", but it's consistent with the OP's comment: the risk for young people is quite low, and is concentrated amongst the obese (and diseases related to obesity).
Just for the obvious extreme example, if I say 0.01% of total hospitalizations are young people with ebola, that doesn't let you conclude anything about whether catching ebola is "quite low risk" for that group.
It tells you what to expect if you're a doctor working with hospitalized patients, or if you run a hospital.
This is why they did the study.
> if I say 0.01% of total hospitalizations are young people with ebola, that doesn't let you conclude anything about whether catching ebola is "quite low risk" for that group.
1) that's not what this study calculated. You still don't understand it.
The equivalent study would be "of young people hospitalized with ebola, what percentage of them die?" (and BTW, the answer would be: "a huge percentage of them"...unlike Covid.)
2) They weren't trying to say anything about catching the virus. I understand that you really want to use this paper to make the claim, but it's just not relevant.
They took a population of young people hospitalized for Covid, removed the pregnancies, and looked at what happened to the rest. That's it. It doesn't tell you anything about "catching Covid". It does tell you that if you're young and not obese, not diabetic and don't have heart disease, you are overwhelmingly likely not to die from it.
I know that.
> 2) They weren't trying to say anything about catching the virus. I understand that you really want to use this paper to make the claim, but it's just not relevant.
I know that, and I wasn't talking about catching, I was talking about the risk of death if you catch it.
> The equivalent study would be "of young people hospitalized with ebola, what percentage of them die?" (and BTW, the answer would be: "a huge percentage of them"...unlike Covid.)
> It does tell you that if you're young and not obese, not diabetic and don't have heart disease, you are overwhelmingly likely not to die from it.
I'm not sure what your definition of "overwhelming" is so I'll put it this way:
Of young people hospitalized, the percentage chance of death is still pretty high. The numbers you quoted were 10 percent! I'm pretty sure you quoted wrong and the real number is 3 percent, but that's still a very real chance of death that you should try very strongly to avoid.
The original quote was "Young healthy people have never been at risk."
Your amended version was "the risk is quite small indeed".
Neither of those fits a 3 percent death rate, even after taking into account the risk factors and focusing on patients without them. That chance of death is something that might be acceptable once or twice in your entire life after great consideration.
The only way to get a "small" risk here is to factor in a sufficient number of people that catch it but never end up in the hospital at all (if there are enough of them). Going purely by the hospital numbers it's not something to brush off at all.
I didn't bother to explain that part because I didn't think you were actually suggesting that 343 out of 3222 is quite low risk! I assumed you were talking about a different number.
But a nontrivial percentage of young people hospitalized for COVID are not obese, and some otherwise healthy young people have died.
So the claim is false. "Much less risk" is not "no risk."
If you want to attack someone (again: not me) for saying "there's no risk to young people unless they're obese" -- which is essentially what the OP said -- then that's your prerogative, but I have better places to grind axes.
I think it's important to make it clear that the risk is quite small indeed, and let people make up their own minds. That's different than implying that a "non-zero risk" is somehow meaningful to a young person.