So I wanted to clarify some comments I made yesterday about this disease regarding age.
Yes. The fatality rate for those under 50 might be 0.1% compared to 10%+ for those over 80.
But the point I have been trying to get across is it seems like many think that means 99.9% of those in that age group have no symptoms or a mild stay at home.
That is true for most but not all. A week or so ago I saw a chart for hospitalizations by age. I spent a little time searching today and couldn't find it again. Everyone wants to talk about death rates by age. (If anyone else finds a link I would appreciate knowing.)
But for the 30~50 the hospitalization rate was above 5% IIRC.
That is no where need as bad as those over 80. But there are more people aged 30 to 50 than those over 80. If enough get sick at the same time that can overwhelm ICUs.
And the 0.1% death rate is predicted on those that are hospitalized having good ICU care which can mean 3 weeks of intensive care including ventilator and frequent draining of liquid from the lungs.
And death rates can really go up when the system is overloaded. I found the following link for that.
The rapid increase in the number of cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 highlighted how quickly health systems can be challenged to provide adequate care.1 Case-fatality proportions were 7-fold higher for patients in Hubei Province compared with those outside of the region, 2.9% vs 0.4%, emphasizing the importance of health system capacity in the care of patients who are critically ill with COVID-19.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2762996
Many places in Africa are not going to be able to provide this treatment. So unless tropical climates are mostly immune from the virus, I think Africa could have a much higher death rate in the under 50 crowd than China and Italy have had.