It's not just the elderly who will die if the system is overwhelmed. Nearly 40% of those that are sick enough to require hospital care are between the ages of 20 and 64[1]. If everyone is getting it at the same time and there's not enough health care to go around, those 20-64 year olds will be dying too.
Exactly. As of March 18th in Italy 8.3% of healthcare workers are infected and several older doctors have already died. That's bad for everyone in all age groups.
>> New C.D.C. data showed that nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were aged 20 to 54.
To be more specific:
>> Among 508 (12%) patients known to have been hospitalized, 9% were aged ≥85 years, 26% were aged 65–84 years, 17% were aged 55–64 years, 18% were 45–54 years, and 20% were aged 20–44 years. Less than 1% of hospitalizations were among persons aged ≤19 years (Figure 2). The percentage of persons hospitalized increased with age, from 2%–3% among persons aged ≤9 years, to ≥31% among adults aged ≥85 years. (Table).
More to the point:
>> The cases described in this report include both COVID-19 cases confirmed by state or local public health laboratories as well as those with a positive test at the state or local public health laboratories and confirmation at CDC. No data on serious underlying health conditions were available. Data on these cases are preliminary and are missing for some key characteristics of interest, including hospitalization status (1,514), ICU admission (2,253), death (2,001), and age (386).
I don't really get why the 20-54 age range is reported as one category in the NYT article when they're reported as separate categories in the CDC report. Would it weaken the arcile's point to report that 20-44 year olds and 45-54 year olds both had around 20% chance of being hospitalised?
Yeah, I think saying "X% of those hospitalized were in age group Y" is deceptive, because it says nothing about the base population distribution. If we just have a disproportionately large or small number of people in age group Y, that's going to directly drive X.
Of course the article's message is still very true: even young people need to stop being idiots when it comes to social gatherings. But it may still be primarily for the sake of others. I kind of wonder if this article is attempting to scare them into being socially-responsible, even if that means using dubious statistical reporting.
I think the article groups 20-54 because some people believe that only older people are much affected by the disease. They picture hospitals filled with the elderly. However, the data shows here that if you visited a US hospital filled with these COVID-19 patients that close to 40% of them would actually be younger people.
The article is not claiming that 20-54 year olds with the disease have a 40% chance requiring hospitalization. The stats quoted also do not show that the 20-44 or 45-54 cohorts have a 20% chance of requiring hospitalization. Instead, it's saying that the 20-54 cohort makes up close to 40% of the people who require hospitalization.
I.e. I think you have the probability conditional backward. It's not P(need hospital|age 20-54) ~= 40%. Instead it's P(age 20-54|need hospital) ~= 40%
The point is that it's not only the elderly who are affected here. They may be most at risk, and most likely to die even with hospitalization, but even younger people get sick enough to require hospitalization, without which the fatality rate of that cohort may rise as well. If we don't "flatten the curve" then adults of all ages may not get the hospitalization they need and start dying.
>> The article is not claiming that 20-64 year olds with the disease have a 40% chance requiring hospitalization.
The article subtitle says:
"nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were aged 20 to 54."
>> I.e. I think you have the probability conditional backward. It's not P(need hospital|age 20-64) ~= 40%. Instead it's P(age 20-64|need hospital) ~= 40%
The article is not making any such formal distinction.
>> Would it weaken the arcile's point to report that 20-44 year olds and 45-54 year olds both had around 20% chance of being hospitalised?
But I think that's unfair to the article. The data are not showing that 20% of age 20-44 are hospitalized (which is how I read your question). Rather the data say that 20% of the hospitalized are age 20-44. In fact, the article does report that explicitly in the 6th paragraph:
In the C.D.C. report, 20 percent of the hospitalized patients and 12 percent of the intensive care patients were between the ages of 20 and 44, basically spanning the millennial generation.
So the article is being fair to the report, it is just summarizing the report data in the lede.
>> The data are not showing that 20% of age 20-44 are hospitalized (which is how I read your question).
That is clearly not what I say. I quoted the CDC report that clarifies that a) 20% of those hospitalised were in the age range 20-44 and 18% in the range 45-54 and that b) that is only those for whom there is age data, which were only a small proportion of all confirmed cases. Please give me the benefit of the doubt that I know how to read English. At the very least I must have read and understood the passage I quoted!
The article is pulling the CDC data this way and that and tries to argue that "younger adults make up [a] big proportion of coronavirus hospitalisations from the US", but there is no reason to base such a claim on the CDC data and there is no such claim in the CDC report. The Times article simply mashed up some of the data in the CDC report to make a sensational title. My comment suggests that, if they want to attach a probability to the hospitalisation of different age ranges, they should not try to aggregate the CDC age ranges just to get to that "almost 40%" and instead use the best approximation that can be derived from the CDC data, which is about 20% for those in each age range, 20-44 and 45-54.
And you are pulling my comment this way and that to show ... I'm not sure what. Do you agree with the article, that "younger adults make up [a] big proportion of coronavirus hospitalisation from the US"? If not, what exactly are you disagreeing with in my comment?
I'm curious about comorbidities in those below 65 that were hospitalized. The US generally leads the world in a lot of those health problems that predict poor outcomes if you get COVID19
What's the definition of "sick enough to be hospitalized"? Given the over-abundance of caution, I would imagine a good number of people with positive tests are admitted, monitored overnight, then released in the morning, without ever really showing much more than mild symptoms.
Tom and Rita Hanks were hospitalized. The worst of it, according to them was "a bit tired, some body aches... some chills. Slight fever too" Now he "feels the 'blahs' but has no fever."
Anecdotally from people talking on my local subreddits, very few people are getting testing at all unless they need serious medical attention. People with less severe cases just get sent home. They're only getting tested if they have confirmed contact with someone who tested positive, or recently returned from international travel. I guess that way we can pretend community spread doesn't exist.
The medical treatment that movie stars and NBA players are getting is not representative of the average American's experience.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] threadTo be more specific:
>> Among 508 (12%) patients known to have been hospitalized, 9% were aged ≥85 years, 26% were aged 65–84 years, 17% were aged 55–64 years, 18% were 45–54 years, and 20% were aged 20–44 years. Less than 1% of hospitalizations were among persons aged ≤19 years (Figure 2). The percentage of persons hospitalized increased with age, from 2%–3% among persons aged ≤9 years, to ≥31% among adults aged ≥85 years. (Table).
More to the point:
>> The cases described in this report include both COVID-19 cases confirmed by state or local public health laboratories as well as those with a positive test at the state or local public health laboratories and confirmation at CDC. No data on serious underlying health conditions were available. Data on these cases are preliminary and are missing for some key characteristics of interest, including hospitalization status (1,514), ICU admission (2,253), death (2,001), and age (386).
From the report:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm?s_cid=mm...
I don't really get why the 20-54 age range is reported as one category in the NYT article when they're reported as separate categories in the CDC report. Would it weaken the arcile's point to report that 20-44 year olds and 45-54 year olds both had around 20% chance of being hospitalised?
Of course the article's message is still very true: even young people need to stop being idiots when it comes to social gatherings. But it may still be primarily for the sake of others. I kind of wonder if this article is attempting to scare them into being socially-responsible, even if that means using dubious statistical reporting.
The article is not claiming that 20-54 year olds with the disease have a 40% chance requiring hospitalization. The stats quoted also do not show that the 20-44 or 45-54 cohorts have a 20% chance of requiring hospitalization. Instead, it's saying that the 20-54 cohort makes up close to 40% of the people who require hospitalization.
I.e. I think you have the probability conditional backward. It's not P(need hospital|age 20-54) ~= 40%. Instead it's P(age 20-54|need hospital) ~= 40%
The point is that it's not only the elderly who are affected here. They may be most at risk, and most likely to die even with hospitalization, but even younger people get sick enough to require hospitalization, without which the fatality rate of that cohort may rise as well. If we don't "flatten the curve" then adults of all ages may not get the hospitalization they need and start dying.
(edit: corrected age bracket from 20-64 to 20-54)
The article subtitle says:
"nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were aged 20 to 54."
>> I.e. I think you have the probability conditional backward. It's not P(need hospital|age 20-64) ~= 40%. Instead it's P(age 20-64|need hospital) ~= 40%
The article is not making any such formal distinction.
>> Would it weaken the arcile's point to report that 20-44 year olds and 45-54 year olds both had around 20% chance of being hospitalised?
But I think that's unfair to the article. The data are not showing that 20% of age 20-44 are hospitalized (which is how I read your question). Rather the data say that 20% of the hospitalized are age 20-44. In fact, the article does report that explicitly in the 6th paragraph:
In the C.D.C. report, 20 percent of the hospitalized patients and 12 percent of the intensive care patients were between the ages of 20 and 44, basically spanning the millennial generation.
So the article is being fair to the report, it is just summarizing the report data in the lede.
That is clearly not what I say. I quoted the CDC report that clarifies that a) 20% of those hospitalised were in the age range 20-44 and 18% in the range 45-54 and that b) that is only those for whom there is age data, which were only a small proportion of all confirmed cases. Please give me the benefit of the doubt that I know how to read English. At the very least I must have read and understood the passage I quoted!
The article is pulling the CDC data this way and that and tries to argue that "younger adults make up [a] big proportion of coronavirus hospitalisations from the US", but there is no reason to base such a claim on the CDC data and there is no such claim in the CDC report. The Times article simply mashed up some of the data in the CDC report to make a sensational title. My comment suggests that, if they want to attach a probability to the hospitalisation of different age ranges, they should not try to aggregate the CDC age ranges just to get to that "almost 40%" and instead use the best approximation that can be derived from the CDC data, which is about 20% for those in each age range, 20-44 and 45-54.
And you are pulling my comment this way and that to show ... I'm not sure what. Do you agree with the article, that "younger adults make up [a] big proportion of coronavirus hospitalisation from the US"? If not, what exactly are you disagreeing with in my comment?
Tom and Rita Hanks were hospitalized. The worst of it, according to them was "a bit tired, some body aches... some chills. Slight fever too" Now he "feels the 'blahs' but has no fever."
https://twitter.com/tomhanks/status/1237909897020207104
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/18/tom-hanks-has-t...
... so I would not count on anecdotes until we have more complete data.
The medical treatment that movie stars and NBA players are getting is not representative of the average American's experience.