Senior citizens are paying the biggest price by far

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial this morning called “The Covid Age Penalty”. The editorial – for once – wasn’t aiming to grind a particular ideological axe, but it did have some make some pretty telling points about the huge difference between seniors’ experience with Covid-19 and the experiences of other age groups. Since I happen to be a member of the former group, I paid particular attention to it. Here are some of the important points I noted:

• About 80% of people who have died of Covid-19 in the US are older than 65.
• For most people under 65, the risk of dying isn’t much higher than the risk of getting in a car accident while driving to work.
• People over 85 are about 17 times more likely to die than people aged 55 to 64. The editorial didn’t give the comparison for people under 55, but the ratio is probably much higher in that comparison.
• Currently, people over 75 account for two-thirds of total deaths, while people under 45 account for less than two percent. This is a stunning statistic.
• In 30 or so states, nursing homes account for 50% of fatalities.
• People over 65 who are in relatively good health are unlikely to die or get seriously ill.

There are a couple pretty easy conclusions to draw from this. The first is that it really shouldn’t be that hard to bring total deaths down a lot more by concentrating as much as possible on seniors, and in particular nursing homes. I’ve wondered for a while why, in the face of appalling stories about nursing homes where the coronavirus ran wild among staff and patients, there hasn’t been a concerted national effort to address the problem. Maybe we have to build special hospitals to house sick nursing home patients (a la the hospitals China built in Wuhan in 10 days. They’re now empty, but they were there when they were needed). Maybe we also need to test all residents and staff members at least once a week, or even every day. After all, there’s one senior in the White House who gets tested every day, as does anyone who can come in contact with him. This was a great pilot program – now let’s roll it out everywhere.

The second conclusion is that, if and when the need for new lockdowns comes (as could happen in Houston soon, and is very likely in the US if we get a second big wave in the fall), the overwhelming focus should be on protecting seniors – and maybe a lot of younger people won’t need to lock down at all. Of course, that’s assuming their workplaces are safe, which isn’t a good assumption now. If they’re not, there will be no choice but to lock everybody down again.

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). No other variables go into the projected numbers – they are all projections based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 5%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths could in theory be predicted very accurately, if one knew the real number of cases. In other words, the people who are going to die in the next 3-4 weeks of Covid-19 are already sick with the disease, even though they may not know it yet. But this means that the trend in deaths should be some indicator of the level of infection 3-4 weeks previous.

However, once we get beyond 3-4 weeks, deaths become more and more dependent on policies and practices that are put in place – or removed, as is more the case nowadays - after today (as well as other factors like the widespread availability of an effective treatment, if not a real “cure”). Yet I still think there’s value in just trending out the current rate of increase in deaths, since it gives some indication of what will happen in the near term if there are no significant intervening changes.

However, it’s 100% certain that deaths won’t stop at the end of June! They might decline some more this summer, but Drs. Redfield (CDC head) and Fauci both predict there will be a new wave of the virus in the fall, and one noted study said there was a good probability the fall wave would be greater than the one we’re in now, as happened in the 1918 pandemic.

Week ending	Deaths reported during week/month	Avg. deaths per day during week/month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
March 7	18	3
March 14	38	5
March 21	244	35
March 28	1,928	275
Month of March	4,058	131
April 4	6,225	889
April 11	12,126	1,732
April 18	18,434	2,633
April 25	15,251	2,179
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
May 2	13,183	1,883
May 9	12,592	1,799
May 16	10,073	1,439
May 23	8,570	1,224
May 30	6,874	982
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
June 6	6,544	935
June 13	5,488	784
June 20	5,756	822
June 27	6,038	863
Month of June	25,560	852	60%
July 4	6,334	905
July 11	6,644	949
July 18	6,969	996
July 25	7,310	1,044
Month of July	31,512	1,017	123%
Total March – July	163,270

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 116,847

Increase in deaths since previous day: 795 (vs. 912 yesterday)

Percent increase in deaths since previous day: 1% (this number was 1% yesterday)

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 5% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above – it was 5% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in deaths, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 2,117,991

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 27,876

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 1%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 8%

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 842,006

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 116,847

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 12% (vs. 12% yesterday)

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com