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0 pointsfiblye6y ago0 comments

That statistic still only takes into account known and confirmed infections. Most reported deaths are from people who have other major health issues.

With reports of people being infected in nursing homes, there's a possibility that even the elderly are being silently infected and symptoms aren't severe enough for them to seek treatment. It seems like there's some unknown factor that makes some people extremely sensitive to it, while others feel nothing at all.

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notacoward6y ago· 2 in thread

> Most reported deaths are from people who have other major health issues.

The percentage of people 70+ who have "other major health issues" is higher than you seem to think. People who are themselves in their 40s or 50s are likely to know several. Maybe that's not as true for people in their 20s, especially those who live within a closed social circle of mostly their FAANG/startup coworkers, but it's a bit insensitive (at best) to act as though that's true for everyone.

fiblyeOP6y ago

Thanks for the completely inaccurate personal attack. :)

News articles regarding this have been very explicit about saying the victims have notable health problems and not simply age. e.g., A long history of lung problems, cancer, etc. Plenty of old people are recovering fine, and I'm sure the reason health issues are mentioned is because those people have exceptionally bad health in some way.

I don't think anyone really doesn't know that old people are less healthy overall. It's bizarre that some people think they need to explain that fact in a condescending manner.

notacoward6y ago

As Frank Herbert once wrote:

"My son displays a general garment and you claim it's cut to your fit. What a fascinating revelation."

It wasn't a personal attack. It's not my problem if you chose to apply it to yourself. But enough of your meta-discussion. You displayed an all too common misunderstanding about how (un)healthy older people are, so I challenged it. Here are some figures on co-morbidity factors for Covid-19.

* Cardiovascular disease 13.2%

* Diabetes 9.2%

* Chronic respiratory disease 8.0%

* Hypertension 8.4%

* Cancer 7.6%

(all from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...)

So, how common are these issues in the 70+ crowd?

* 25-35% of US adults 65 or over have cardiovascular disease (range due to gender difference)

* 19-23% have diabetes

* 8-9% have asthma, 21-26% have bronchitis or emphysema (oddly the numbers don't cover COPD which I believe is around 15%)

* 55-57% have hypertension

* 21-26% have cancer at some point

(all from https://agingstats.gov/docs/LatestReport/Older-Americans-201...)

Given those numbers, what percentage of older people do you suppose have escaped all of those ills? Clearly less than half. So of course most of the elderly who have died from Covid-19 already had some other condition, because most of the elderly period have some other condition. Assuming the existence of vast numbers of elderly without such conditions for the sake of your argument is just not helpful.

Your turn. Bring some facts to the table instead of wild supposition and complaints.

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