If the death rates in children vs. elderly were reversed with COVID, all hell would have broken loose. There is nothing people are more protective over than their kids. Behavior would have been completely different.
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I was in SE Asia when H1N1pdm9 hit. There were 60m cases in the US that year, and 14,000 deaths that year in the US, and 75,000 deaths since 2009. It predominantly affected younger people[1], and barely hit elderly people. The CDC estimates it killed 150k to 500k people the first year it circulated across the world. I was wearing a mask in Macau, and my kids aged 12 and 9 years-old in the US at the time were not as almost all Americans were not wearing masks. The WHO declared an end to the pandemic in August 2010, but it causes illness, hospitalizations, and deaths each year as a seasonal flu the same way COVID-19 probably will in the coming years.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemi...
Yes, indeed.
I believe there's been a misunderstanding where people think COVID is more dangerous to elderly people because they just tend to be generically vulnerable to a lot of disease.
That's not the case, however. If you compare death rates within different age groups, the risk for elderly is dramatically higher, even in comparison to other diseases that tend to be worse in old age (yes, exactly, such as the flu).
Even though it's less dangerous for young people, there's still reports that it was the top cause of death for people in their 20s or 30s this summer. The absolute numbers aren't that high, but it turns out people in their 20s and 30s don't die randomly that often either.
It also depends on how one defines danger. Would you rather die a few years earlier in your old age? Or live with reduced lung capacity for many years? And how common is that with COVID19?
We're still waiting to see the fall-out of long COVID.
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I'll take two fewer years of lifespan, for 200, Alex.
I'm an athlete, and my cardiopulmonary bits are essential to my sense of well-being.
/Acey
You say this now but if we ask you then, the day of your death, would you rather die now or live a few more years in a diminished capacity, you might have a very different answer.
Don't outsmart yourself.
If you told anyone, on their death bed, "if you had run 25 km a week since [n-15 years] you would have been able to move better / dance with pretty girls / play [tennis | golf | etc] until two years ago," I think most people would say WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME.
/Acey
But that’s not the trade off. Rather it’s “would you rather die now, or have lived in a diminished capacity for the last few decades?”
True. But the data to date indicates that it boils down to marginalized vs not. Covid has done well with nursing homes and lower socioeconomic minority communities. People absolutely care about the children. But they care about what threatens them directly as well.
The profile to date is not close enough to home for most (white) middle class Americans. But that lack of fear to some extent, at this point, is statistically justified. That is, once you get outside the sweet spot the chance of death declines.
The virus is real. The deaths are real. However, despite the media hyperbol (and complete lack of basic lack of understanding of data and data analysis) how those deaths are distributed is uneven. Very much so.
On the other hand the lockdowns were extremely destructive on children. Loss of schools, education, parents losing jobs, domestic violence, suicides.
Honestly, kids are just fine with it. Anecdotally, they are managing far better than adults. Not oblivious to the situation, but far more adaptable to just staying at home.
Depends where and who we live with.
Agreed. Nothing is more important to most than the future (kids). The past seems to be a whatever. We don't learn from the past at all. Sadly.
> We don't learn from the past at all. Sadly.
History rhymes and we are doing our best. Please don't blame others ala "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat the mistakes"... We will have much more possibilities and views in the future though and are currently blind(er) compared to that.