Why COVID-19 kills some people and spares others. Here's what scientists are finding.

May 6, 2020
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The novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 seems to hit some people harder than others, with some people experiencing just mild symptoms and others being hospitalized and requiring ventilation. Here's why.

Why COVID-19 kills some people and spares others. Here's what scientists are finding. : Read more
Ok, I will bite. How does 80% (8 out of 10) = 11% + 27% (38%) ?

"About 8 out of 10 deaths associated with COVID-19 in the U.S. have occurred in adults ages 65 and older, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The risk of dying from the infection, and the likelihood of requiring hospitalization or intensive medical care, increases significantly with age. For instance, adults ages 65-84 make up an estimated 4-11% of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S, while adults ages 85 and above make up 10-27%. "
 
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May 6, 2020
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Ok, I will bite. How does 80% (8 out of 10) = 11% + 27% (38%) ?

"About 8 out of 10 deaths associated with COVID-19 in the U.S. have occurred in adults ages 65 and older, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The risk of dying from the infection, and the likelihood of requiring hospitalization or intensive medical care, increases significantly with age. For instance, adults ages 65-84 make up an estimated 4-11% of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S, while adults ages 85 and above make up 10-27%. "
I see that the writer pulled the stats directly from CDC website but misunderstood them. I believe the last two percentages is the percentage of confirmed cases for the age group that ended in death due to the virus, not the percentage of overall deaths. Livescience needs to vet their articles better else they become yet another source of misinformation.
 
Jun 6, 2020
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To reiterate and add a link.

They have misquoted CDC. See this: See below for estimated percent of adults with confirmed COVID-19 reported in the U.S:

If most of the confirmed cases are 65+ then the math can work out.
 
Mar 24, 2020
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From the article: "These influences could explain why some perfectly healthy 20-year-old with the disease is in dire straits, while an older 70-year-old dodges the need for critical interventions. " Nothing in this article explained why some 20's get real sick and 70's don't except for a vague reference that blood type or genetics might be a factor.. This article contained nothing new.. Stuff I've already read a thousand times..
 
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Jun 13, 2020
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In addition to the flat-out wrong percentages already mentioned, "Though scientists at first thought age was the dominant factor..." is radically misleading. It has been extremely well borne out that age is the dominant factor associated with risk, as the CDC stats make clear: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku/data . As noted in https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.20108969v1 , completely uncontrolled diabetes gives one the vulnerability of someone approximately 10 years older than they are, as does a BMI above 40; using the figures in the article about blood type, having type A is equivalent to 3 years' risk (95% confidence interval 1 year to 6 years). A far cry from age not being the dominant factor!
 
Jun 22, 2020
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here in NY the areas which have fared worst have higher levels of air pollution resulting in asthma and a diet high in processed food (higher obesity rate and victims of the diabetes epidemic), so this pandemic has brought greater awareness to modifying to a more healthy diet as well as switching to renewables for better air quality. Cuomo showed during one of his pressers that a survey taken by local hospitalizations showed that pre-existing conditions was the major underlying factor behind hospitalizations, 96% Being outside or even working in the healthcare field was much less of an indicator.
 
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Jul 14, 2020
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Ok, I will bite. How does 80% (8 out of 10) = 11% + 27% (38%) ?

"About 8 out of 10 deaths associated with COVID-19 in the U.S. have occurred in adults ages 65 and older, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The risk of dying from the infection, and the likelihood of requiring hospitalization or intensive medical care, increases significantly with age. For instance, adults ages 65-84 make up an estimated 4-11% of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S, while adults ages 85 and above make up 10-27%. "

I think the article got the statistics from an article similar to this one:

As of March 16, a total of 4,226 COVID-19 cases in the United States had been reported to CDC, with multiple cases reported among older adults living in long-term care facilities (4). Overall, 31% of cases, 45% of hospitalizations, 53% of ICU admissions, and 80% of deaths associated with COVID-19 were among adults aged ≥65 years with the highest percentage of severe outcomes among persons aged ≥85 years.

The same article has
This first preliminary description of outcomes among patients with COVID-19 in the United States indicates that fatality was highest in persons aged ≥85, ranging from 10% to 27%, followed by 3% to 11% among persons aged 65–84 years, 1% to 3% among persons aged 55-64 years, <1% among persons aged 20–54 years, and no fatalities among persons aged ≤19 years.

Further on,
Among 44 cases with known outcome, 15 (34%) deaths were reported among adults aged ≥85 years, 20 (46%) among adults aged 65–84 years, and nine (20%) among adults aged 20–64 years. Case-fatality percentages increased with increasing age, from no deaths reported among persons aged ≤19 years to highest percentages (10%–27%) among adults aged ≥85 years (Table) (Figure 2).

This explains there methodology:
The lower bound of these percentages was estimated by using all cases within each age group as denominators. The corresponding upper bound of these percentages was estimated by using only cases with known information on each outcome as denominators.

10% - 27% and 3% - 11% are based on reported age, while 34% and 46% (80%) seem to be based on known outcome. These were from 4,226 COVID-19 cases that state and CDC confirmed back in March; the data was missing'/incomplete.

It seems they are using different sampling criteria for each.
 
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Jul 7, 2020
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The novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 seems to hit some people harder than others, with some people experiencing just mild symptoms and others being hospitalized and requiring ventilation. Here's why.

Why COVID-19 kills some people and spares others. Here's what scientists are finding. : Read more

The numbers on "people over 65" are misleading and dangerous. Many people in that age group have comorbidities and many live in nursing homes or other environments where they can't escape close contact from others. When you separate out nursing home occupancy and comorbidities, the age differences vanish. Immunosenescence varies widely among people over 65 and appears very low among people who are physically fit. I discuss this at length with references in my article http://mycopy.info/agemed

Mexico never saw older people at extreme risk. In that country, comorbidities occur at all ages and few nursing homes exist.

This is ageism, pure and simple.One geriatrician (quoted in my article) says a fit person who's 80 has a better chance of surviving than a 60yo with underlying conditions. .
 
Sep 5, 2020
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Even at this late date, we still know so very little about Covid-19. Lots of stats and numbers, but do we ever correlate these with what might have happened to these same people in the absence of their having been tagged with Covid-19? For instance, if "adults ages 65-84 make up an estimated 4-11% of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S, while adults ages 85 and above make up 10-27%", how many of these deaths would have been normal to experience, in the absence of Covid-19? We see so much distortion of the limited info that is available to us, that many people think the numbers are stacked against normalcy and in favor of the culprit Covid-19. Until we start to compare apples with apples, this perception of distortion will continue. We read about numerous instances of people dying from obvious other reasons but still being listed as having died from Covid-19, including car or motorcycle accidents, heart attacks, cancers, etc. During the New York onslaught, the news media stated that the Governor had instructed medical people to simply list all deaths as Covid-19 caused, perhaps to underscore their apparent need for Federal aid. Many other strange things are occurring throughout the world. How are people to get a grip on the true numbers, and more importantly, how are scientists and the medical community to really know what they are dealing with when there is so much distortion of numbers? When I took statistics class years ago I learned that people can make statistics say whatever they want, regardless of reality.

I appreciate the opportunity to discuss things about Covid-19 without being accused of being conspiracy theorists etc. There is so much that still needs to be addressed if we are ever going to get to the true cause(s) and means to possibly deter or prevent this virus from again attacking us. For instance, is there a possible connection to atmospheric and/or man-made electricity, as is inferred towards influenza by Arthur Firstenberg in his 2017 publication of "The Invisible Rainbow"? Several hundred years ago, influenza spread faster than people and showed up on ships that had been at sea for three months. Then after it had run its course, it disappears as quickly as it had appeared. A week or two ago, it was mentioned in the news that they were studying people's stomachs and determined that we all have over a thousand viruses within us. Perhaps we all already have these, including Covid-19, within us but that they only get out of whack and seriously surface when they are triggered by extreme exposure to various unseen electricity or some other odd combination of things.

Sun spots and their cycle apparently peaked around late 2019 but this can then go on for several years before dwindling and resting for a few years. Flu virus epidemics surfaced on many occasions when this similar situation occurred and in 1918-1920 we were also developing radio waves with enormous amounts of non-ionizing radiation spread around the world. Again in WWII we were developing radar and today we are developing 5-G which is going to be blasted from tens of thousands of satellites and around 1,000,000 land stations in the US alone. These 5-G devices operate with unprecedented non-ionizing electrical microwaves at 30-300 giga (billion) hertz while a normal cell phone is around 9 hertz. This is scary to me and I wonder if we will maybe end up sterilizing people, animals and plants from the entire planet? Our technology revolution is happening so fast that we barely have time to invent one thing and then another comes along that makes the previous invention obsolete. There is barely time to build/implement things much less test them for safety, and those who are supposed to be watch-dogs are busy counting their new-found money before they deposit - they could care less if their actions destroy the world as long as they get theirs. We all need to look around us and see the forest for the trees in addition to just the trees.
 
Dec 29, 2020
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So here's the deal and the questions that need answers:
What do most of these comorbidities have in common or how would their common symptoms be treated (what medications)?
It has been documented in published journals that elevated levels of angiotensin and angiotensin 2 have a direct correlation with the process that triggers massive cytokine release.
Cytokines are the real killer as a result of SARS-2 infections in the vast majority of deaths. This fact is rarely cited and explains why most infected individuals are asymptomatic or experience mild symptoms.
Those with already highly compromised lungs, heart, kidney and brains are at risk directly from the virus but those are an extremely small percentage of deaths.
Which brings me to my final questions: Why is such a big deal made of the very few outliers who die outside the normal pattern? Is this meant to instill fear into the public or to sell disinfectant wipes?
It appears like it or not a virus will run it's course. It's not a living thing so you can't "kill it". I am not going to even start on the vaccine that's an entirely different discussion.
So here's the point:
Since it appears at least some group is keenly aware of who is susceptible to the virus, why aren't they the #1a group for inoculation? Could it be that this is just the beta test and providers are never far from medical attention should something go amiss?
 
Jul 4, 2021
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Ok, I will bite. How does 80% (8 out of 10) = 11% + 27% (38%) ?

"About 8 out of 10 deaths associated with COVID-19 in the U.S. have occurred in adults ages 65 and older, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The risk of dying from the infection, and the likelihood of requiring hospitalization or intensive medical care, increases significantly with age. For instance, adults ages 65-84 make up an estimated 4-11% of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S, while adults ages 85 and above make up 10-27%. "
The 11% & 27% figures are from memory the original percentage of how many contracting the virus in those age groups were dying. Of course with better treatments reducing death rates these figures are no longer valid, but tons of outdated data keeps being regurgitated in altered forms (much like that children's game where you say something that gets passed to the next person down the line).
 
Icompletely uncontrolled diabetes gives one the vulnerability of someone approximately 10 years older than they are, as does a BMI above 40; using the figures in the article about blood type, having type A is equivalent to 3 years' risk (95% confidence interval 1 year to 6 years). A far cry from age not being the dominant factor!

All these conditions are more likley to occur with age.

Looking for reasons why a problem is acceptable or not as bad as something else is the start of a fail in my book - If there is a problem, fix it.
 
Even at this late date, we still know so very little about Covid-19. Lots of stats and numbers, but do we ever correlate these with what might have happened to these same people in the absence of their having been tagged with Covid-19?

Looking for reasons for something to be acceptable rather than investigating a [potential] issue with the intention of solving will cause more problems.

The UK include data for excess deaths in addition to cases etc... i.e. if the historic average deaths for June is 5000, but during a known pandemic it reports 8000 then you can safely attribute the 3000 excess to the pandemic. Moreover the number of hospital admissions with breathing apparatus being required to keep patients alive is a precursor something is not typical of previous years...

If you want to go to a real extreme though, it is estimated 50m died with flu commencing 1918 and as we are nowhere near that then really there is no issue and the population/ life expectancy is just reducing as one of those things,