It’s odd to me that we now have enough data to draw reasonable conclusions, yet people are still panicking because they refuse to review this data. Instead, many rely on anecdotal “evidence” and the media’s “the sky is falling” position as the cause for their alarm.
As it stands during the time this article is being written, the COVID-19 death statistic sits at roughly 1.73%. Now, that would be cause for some alarm, if this were to only remain at face value. For a communicable disease, that’s a high mortality rate when coupled with the apparent infection rate. The problem? That number doesn’t realistically present the information.
See, this approximate 1.73% is dependent on the fact that we have 19.4million(ish) confirmed cases of COVID-19. Two things about that 19.4million(ish) number in itself immediately present a problem to the mortality rate. The first is that this number depends on the viability of the testing. It is fairly well known that the testing isn’t incredibly reliable. I imagine that, given the confidence with which the numbers are reported, the margin of error is small enough to be insignificant overall. Fine… We can leave it with 19.4million(ish) confirmed cases. But that brings up the second, and likely much more significant problem: unconfirmed cases. We know for certain that asymptomatic cases exist. The reason we know this is that people who test due to their field of work, sometimes pop positive for COVID-19, despite not having any symptoms. Likewise, we have antibody testing that has shown some carriers who were asymptomatic. Some studies of the data regarding antibodies have posited that there could be upwards of double the cases, if not more, that were asymptomatic.
Let’s take a conservative look at that second bit of information. If we even increase the number of cases by 25%, making about 24million cases, that immediately drops the mortality rate to about 1.38%. That’s quite the dramatic change, and again, that’s assuming an incredibly conservative increase in the likely number of existing cases. In fact, it’s so conservative, that it’s a quarter of what the real estimates are believed to be.
Why is this relevant? Well, the change would drop the mortality rate significantly enough for this to realistically be a non-issue. Next, we would need to couple that piece of data with another item of incredible note. This item would be comorbidity. The most prevalent comorbid trait is age; and that is by an extreme margin. Of course there are other contributing factors that can place someone outside of the age ranges into a higher risk category… But age is the most significant factor by far.
The sweet spot for our age factor seems to be post 55 years. Even after that, the real issue doesn’t come into play until after 80 years. Old age is so much of a factor that about a third of the entire death total is contained within 70+ years of age, with about a quarter of the total actually being above 80. Not to sound cold… But our average length of life in the United States is somewhere around 75. What’s that mean? A significant number of COVID-19 related deaths are from people who have already statistically cheated death.
We’ll circle back around to the estimate we made to adjust for unconfirmed cases and talk about the 1.38% mortality rate and how that relates to the age risk factor. Our pre-55 population makes up only about 25% of the COVID-19 deaths. That’s the entire range from newborn infant, all the way to 55. This means that the youthful population hangs right around a 0.345% mortality rate. Considering that this age range makes up a fair portion of the active population who would be at real risk of exposure - this is the crowd who are going to bars, hitting the gym, schooling, grocery shopping, etc. - we have a fairly safe survival rate. The chances of making it through COVID when you’re young is pretty fantastic.
I admit that we have an aging population. But it’s not so far aged that we should still be afraid to interact with other people by way of social gathering. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t practice good hygiene. This isn’t an indication that we shouldn’t be wary and cognizant of our elderly population, either. We do, however, have one more factor that hasn’t been fully implemented, but will have a fairly substantial impact on all of this as well.
Our latest is an (allegedly) 95% effective vaccine. That effectiveness rate is astounding. Monumental, or even miraculous, one may say. Think about our 20(ish)% effective flu vaccine and how effective that is against the spread, and in turn the mortality rate.
My point is that, even with all of those considerations, the media would have us believe we’re still all going to die. Why? Why perpetuate that much fear? I know it’s been said more than it probably ought to be said, but the only reasonable conclusion is to continue to exert control.
I suppose this would be a good time to finish my tirade, so… “Rant over”.
-Mike H