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Medicine

The Coronavirus is Most Deadly if You Are Older and Male -- New Data Reveal the Risks (nature.com) 253

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: For every 1,000 people infected with the coronavirus who are under the age of 50, almost none will die. For people in their fifties and early sixties, about five will die -- more men than women. The risk then climbs steeply as the years accrue. For every 1,000 people in their mid-seventies or older who are infected, around 116 will die. These are the stark statistics obtained by some of the first detailed studies into the mortality risk for COVID-19. Trends in coronavirus deaths by age have been clear since early in the pandemic. Research teams looking at the presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in people in the general population -- in Spain, England, Italy and Geneva in Switzerland -- have now quantified that risk, says Marm Kilpatrick, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "It gives us a much sharper tool when asking what the impact might be on a certain population that has a certain demographic," says Kilpatrick. The studies reveal that age is by far the strongest predictor of an infected person's risk of dying -- a metric known as the infection fatality ratio (IFR), which is the proportion of people infected with the virus, including those who didn't get tested or show symptoms, who will die as a result.
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The Coronavirus is Most Deadly if You Are Older and Male -- New Data Reveal the Risks More

The Coronavirus is Most Deadly if You Are Older and Male -- New Data Reveal the Risks

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  • Life is more dangerous if you're old and male (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @10:27AM (#60449530) Homepage

    The older you are the more likely you are to die regardless and men on average die younger than women. I'm not sure what this study proves other than older people tend to die of a given illness more often than young people. In other news , the pope's catholic and there are no toilets for bears in the woods.

    • The older you are the more likely you are to die regardless and men on average die younger than women.

      Golly gee, I wonder if those pencil-necks with their clipboards ever thought of that? Thanks for the insight, Wilbur.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        Well it seems to have escaped the notice of the submitter doesn't it Yoda.

        • Wait, wait, hold on there.

          You were credulous of the mere submitter?!

          You need assistance that I'm afraid Yoda cannot provide.

          Do you even understand what it is they submit?

    • Re:Life is more dangerous if you're old and male (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @11:00AM (#60449716)

      And yet all it takes is a 50 cent paper mask to be less dangerous.

    • older people tend to die of a given illness more often than young people.

      For most infectious diseases, the very young have the highest mortality rates.

      There is nothing abnormal about Covid killing old people. But the way that toddlers and even infants have negligible mortality rates and are often asymptomatic, is very unusual for an infectious disease.

      Covid is weird.

    • Re:Life is more dangerous if you're old and male (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @11:25AM (#60449826)

      I think you miss the point. And you are trying to justify not worrying about a pandemic. Because it is someone else's problem.
      50 and older. That means many of these people are still in the workforce, with 10-20+ years of additional economic service they can perform. Then when they retire, they may no longer be an economic driver, they are involved in a support roll to our society.
      There is a higher chance that older men will trip and fatally fall. That doesn't mean we should just let the sidewalks degrade because old men will probably trip and fall anyways.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Good thing you're not in charge of public health.

    • also stats here showing more likely to die if Latino or Black around Chicago.

    • because they want to.

      Seriously though, men tend to do more blue collar work, which is harder on the body and exposes them to risks and dangerous chemicals. That's why our mortality rate is higher.

  • We need to address this inequality (Score:5, Funny)

    by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @10:55AM (#60449672)

    It is unacceptable that this disease favors older white men.
    We should do everything in our power to make sure women and minorities are equally represented

    • Over represented actually. Because they tend to have a much lower household wealth (about 1/4 white Americans) they also tend to live in crowded, multi-generational households. So the young folk get it at their low paying "essential" jobs (grocery store, take out restaurants, nursing homes, etc) and bring it home to their parents & grandparents who get sick and die. And you can forget about remote learning, they're lucky if they've got a pre-paid cell phone (the famous "Obamaphone").

      It's one of the

      • so you are claiming the death rate among minority groups is entirely based on environment? If that is the case, unless we get a vaccine soon, you should expect the rest of the population to catch up. Funny thing is viruses kill people based on genetics and health , and very little else. The only thing the environment you present changes is rate of exposure. So your cause of higher fatality has got to come from somewhere else. Might be the poor people are less likely to go to the doctor because they do

        • and yeah, it will to a certain extent. It'll never fully catch up because many of the more well to do will work from home and social distance, options that poor minority communities don't have.

          Also, can you stop projecting? You're accusing me of what you (a member of the American Right wing judging by your talking points, or at least you watch their media because that's where you got them) are very active in doing.

          The point I'm making is that systemic racism is causing a disproportionate impact on m

  • Vitamin D (Score:5, Insightful)

    by transporter_ii ( 986545 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @10:55AM (#60449680) Homepage

    The study in England also compared results from different ethnic groups. Mortality and morbidity statistics suggest that Black and South Asian people in England are more likely to die or to be hospitalized.

    Feel free to research this. Several studies say vitamin D is a factor. People with darker skin produce less vitamin D, so that explains that. A few studies don't support the vitamin D theory, though.

    Hey, in America, you can get 60 days of a good d3 supplement for 6.00. It does appear to be somewhat of a factor, so why the heck not?

    Also, not a word about being overweight in that article. You can research that one, too.

    • There is a lot of controversy over vitamin D supplementation not being bio-available and/or toxic
      • Part of the problem is it needs to be Cholecalciferol, also known as vitamin D3. D2 is found in plants and simply is not as bio available, tl;dr D2 doesn’t work. There are almost no plant sources for D3, it is produced industrially from sheep by products. Your body also produces it from the UV light in sunlight, which tends to be more of a problem the darker your skin because we all wear clothes and live indoors now. The majority of people are deficient, and it helps to mitigate respiratory infec
    • Black & South Asian folks tend to live in multi-generational homes. That means the young folk bring it home to the old folk who get sick & die.

      Obesity is often a sign of a lot of other health problems and of a high stress life. I gained a bunch of weight lately because a slew of health problems coupled with the need to move to a large city where it's hard to find good places to bike (my preferred form of exercise & stress relief). So it's entirely possible just being fat isn't the problem, b

  • Not just death (Score:4, Insightful)

    by daten ( 575013 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @11:00AM (#60449712)
    I don't have the numbers, but young people (30) that I know personally who have survived the virus, may have permanent lung damage that will affect them the rest of their life. It's not something you catch and just shrug off. Sure there's allegedly "asymptomatic" people that don't suffer, but that doesn't apply to everyone.

    • Re:Not just death (Score:5, Interesting)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Friday August 28, 2020 @11:39AM (#60449876) Journal

      I don't have the numbers, but young people (30) that I know personally who have survived the virus, may have permanent lung damage that will affect them the rest of their life. It's not something you catch and just shrug off. Sure there's allegedly "asymptomatic" people that don't suffer, but that doesn't apply to everyone.

      MRI studies of asymptomatic cases show that a large percentage have significant observable heart and brain damage. Interestingly, the heart and brain damage does not seem to be correlated with the severity of symptoms.

      I think it's going to take decades to fully understand the impact of COVID-19. It won't surprise me at all if 30 years from now we're seeing studies saying things like "If you had COVID-19 in the early 2020s, you have a 40% higher risk of X", where X is some serious disease of a major, life-critical organ.

      • Re:Not just death (Score:5, Interesting)

        by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @12:07PM (#60449994)
        There aren’t many minor, life uncritical organs. I too know someone who at a minimum has lung damage, 42 years old, O2 sat wont go above 85% for two months now and they were never very sick. Losing your sense of smell is actually due to localized brain damage according to the latest medical literature, that’s why many people are not getting it back. It’s disgusting how many people are saying this is like the flu, flu does not cause brain damage in any significant capacity nor do you get blood clots that lead to widespread micro embolisms and necrotic tissue. Numbers are difficult to get at this point, but it’s looking like 5% or so of people are getting life altering, permanent disabilities. I think the only reason the long term problems aren’t being discussed is that too many other things are happening right now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        Isn't it the same with many other diseases?
        Covid-19 is not the only disease that does weird stuff, but we are all focused on it right now.
        Maybe some common colds do that too, we don't just do PCR tests to identify every cold virus you had followed by MRI scans. In fact, hadn't Covid-19 been so deadly the "regular" way, I'm not sure anyone would have paid attention.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          No, COVID is different. Some of the more subtle and still preliminary findings may not be that unusual. The heart thing for example. Lots of COVID survivors have inflammation of the heart, but so do lots of people who've just had a cold. Further study will be required to determine how many of those people suffer permanent damage.

          Various other effects are already pretty firmly in the serious category. COVID is a bad disease and it has the potential to mess you up pretty badly even if it doesn't kill you. Any

    • and blood clot problems that can lead to strokes. And a whole host of other long term effects. It hits pretty much every organ in the body.
    • I don't have the numbers, but old people that I know personally (me), shrugged it off with no discernable long term effects. Two days of high fever and body aches for another 5 days and that was pretty much it.

  • ... woman most affected. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Noishkel ( 3464121 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @11:02AM (#60449730)
    You forgot the rest of the meme. And given the rampant misandry of most intersection feminist I expect that you will eventually see that argument made once the first story starts to circulate a little better.
    • Yes, there are some misandric (?, right word?) feminists out there. Very few actually, and most got that way from physical and sexual abuse (or from being social workers that deal with it all day long).

      There's also the "TERFs", which is a whole 'nother world of terrible.

      BUT (and it's a big but)... they're few and far between, and generally confined to powerless roles in community college women's studies.

      They seem to be a lot more prevalent because there is an entire media empire, Turning Point U
  • That's both sex and age discrimination!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      The 1918 flu mostly killed younger adults. There's a running theory prior similar flu(s) gave the older generation immunity.

      Who gets whacked the most is partly the luck of the draw.

  • ... until the second wave wiped out millions of young people.

  • Everything is prejudiced against men from people to disease.

  • As a male of age 71.6 this makes me feel good.
    Not!

  • So - since I know we are all very coherent people - given that when a similar study stating black people were more affected by COVID19 was deemed proof of society's deep racism, this means that this study now proves that society is also deeply misandric. Correct?

  • First, because we know so little about this new disease. Lacking a full understanding of its true origins and mechanisms, many of these studies are statistical as opposed to scientific - which leads to many chances for causation-correlation fallacies to arise. That does not mean they are of no value, just that we may be misunderstanding what the numbers are actually saying.

    Second, because we are in the last two months (approx) of a US Presidential election cycle in which things have become hyper-partisan an

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