Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

yorkshirecoastradio.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 167 posts

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#121

Post by me_me_me »

dchichkov wrote: post #109
beat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the parent of adult children currently living at home... one of ours keeps going out to be with friends. I understand she needs to get out of the house sometimes, but it's unnerving, knowing the points of contact (she often goes to her boyfriend's house, with his five currently-unemployed roommates). Then again, she works in a children's health clinic. I know what vector is probably going to bring COVID into our h…

It'd be interesting to understand what evolutionary pressures the combined behaviors of population have on COVID-19. Distancing arguably should create evolutionary pressure towards a weaker, asymptomatic, more contagious virus. And reckless behavior in the segments of population unaffected by the virus may put evolutionary pressure to make it a stronger, but not as contagious virus. (an uninformed opinion of a softwa…

> Distancing arguably should create evolutionary pressure towards a weaker, asymptomatic, more contagious virus

This doesn't make sense to me. Distancing reduces number of cases and chances to spread infections, reducing chances for successful mutations.

It seems that instead of having multiple strains you will end up with most resilient strain in the end. But that's probably better as you have to fight a single strain then.

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#122

Post by [deleted] »

jhayward wrote: post #7

I'm puzzled by the intense focus on whether someone who dies had a pre-existing condition. It's like people want to convict the person for their own death, make it look like they were irresponsible, as a denial mechanism. By blaming the person for succumbing to the virus they can fall in to the US-centric mindset of blaming people for their own disfortune, poverty, illness, accident, lack of whiteness, etc. It's real…

[deleted]

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#123

Post by stanfordkid »

ramblerman wrote: post #111
sonicggg wrote: post #26

It seems that anecdotal evidence of young people dying of COVID-19 is the trend of the moment. Not sure if it's just cheap clickbait or the goal is to make younger generations to actually care about social distancing. The deal is that we are dealing with the power of large numbers. You can cherry-pick whatever case you want to fit your narrative. It does not mean its relevant information.

Fear sells. This is tragic, but the exception to the rule. To add some weight to your argument, the official stats from italy offer clear data [1]: - 1.1% of deaths in Italy - No deaths - 99% with comorbidities, 75% with at least 2 comorbidities. [1] https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...

This is insane -- Median age of 60 for diagnosed patients?

What this indicates to me is that Italy was testing only the worst patients. This whole scare to me reeks of sampling bias. We only test the worst patients for covid 19 which ups the mortality rate.

The truth is -- people who are at risk should social distance themselves rather than the general population. We want herd immunity to develop for this disease -- that means having young healthy people be exposed to it.

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#124

Post by dahart »

mbeex wrote: post #102
dahart wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do we want it at the expense of truth? I’m confused by that, what do you mean? What here is untrue? What is the “truth” that should be reported here? Someone died of COVID, someone who was young and didn’t have other health factors, which is abnormal compared to what we’ve heard about nearly all other cases of COVID death so far. Nobody claimed this is somehow a huge number of cases, and I think it’s well understoo…

> Someone died of COVID possibly > and didn’t have other health factors an aunt is saying so > who was young the only thing that can be regarded as certain

Have you put this level of skepticism on the news reports about old people dying?

Those details will be proven true or untrue by more official sources, and probably today. My point was not that I know they're true, it's that they are facts that can be checked. But I have no specific reason to be more skeptical of this report than of any other COVID deaths I've read about, do you?

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#125

Post by kian »

jwbwater wrote: post #115
SamBam wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really hope that someone working in a health clinic would be more careful than that. Going over to other people's houses is exactly what people are not supposed to be doing. From my observations, the people who are most flippant about this seem to be boomers and young adults 20-25. I still see groups of young adults on the sidewalks, clearly not roommates, even though our state is in lockdown, and we're right…

A healthcare worker I talked to had the opinion that she's getting exposed at work anyway so why not do what she wants outside of work.

shame that this healthcare worker apparently doesn't care for the other people she exposes. Perhaps the wrong profession?

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#126

Post by asveikau »

lgleason wrote: post #100
asveikau wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong. And exactly as you say: if there is a large population of infected people, the absolute number of people who fit in these small percentage tragedies is actually large.

It may be inevitable either way. 100 years ago life expectancy was 46 years. Today it is well into the 70's. Before that, for most of human history that rate was much lower. Up until now, for the past 80 years (post antibiotics) the human race has been really lucky, but perhaps nature is deciding something different. I hope not, but I do wonder.

I'm not sure what that has to do with my observation that "small percentage" events do occur in small percentages, and that they do occur in large absolute numbers when multiplied by sufficiently large numbers. My point is we shouldn't be dismissive about it not going to happen to "us", because it will happen to nonzero amounts of "us", and that's kind of the point of the mathematical reasoning.

But to your point: Someone else is disputing you on this, but I would say even that it's irrelevant what life expectancy was 100 years ago. Today in the present reality we are talking about mostly preventable death. I don't think we should be so arrogant to say that we can prevent misfortune all the time, but we're not talking about inevitability either. We have medical technology and progress for a reason.

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#127

Post by dahart »

Kaiyou wrote: post #118
jamesrcole wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handfuls of cases are enough to discredit the belief (perhaps not common on HN, but common in many other places) that young people can’t get seriously ill or die from it.

Young people can die in a car crash, too, but that doesn't prevent most people from driving anyway. As long as it's only a small chance, nobody will pay it any mind and keep agreeing, that young people won't die from this. I mean, there are even cases of young people just randomly dying without any visible cause. Yes, not only the elderly can die just like that. No one really pays this any mind either.

There haven't been any common beliefs or narratives that young people couldn't die from driving or couldn't die without visible causes. On the contrary, the common narrative about driving is that young people are disproporionately dying due to inexperience and reckless behavior, and this narrative is true, more young people die in car crashes than old people. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teena...

There have been reports that young people without other complications are not dying from coronavirus. That's why reports of someone young and healthy dying of COVID are getting attention, because it runs contrary to what has been widely reported.

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#128

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

throwanem wrote: post #30

It's easy to find an article like this very frightening, if you're young and healthy and have been thinking there's thus no chance you'll die of COVID-19 if (more likely when, tbh) you get it. I already have it, so I totally understand that. But this is the first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease, and we're over a hundred thousand confirmed cases in. Even assuming the current under…

The survival rate with treatment isn’t the important factor though, it’s survival rate without treatment. If you show up at the hospital with covid and there aren’t any ventilators or beds for you, you’re rolling the dice whether you’re 17 or 70.

Or maybe you’re diligent and you haven’t left the home in weeks and one day you slip and fall in the bathtub and break a bone. How long until an ambulance shows up, if at all? How long until you have surgery, if at all? And then you catch covid anyway.

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#129

Post by throwanem »

toss1 wrote: post #95
throwanem wrote: post #30

It's easy to find an article like this very frightening, if you're young and healthy and have been thinking there's thus no chance you'll die of COVID-19 if (more likely when, tbh) you get it. I already have it, so I totally understand that. But this is the first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease, and we're over a hundred thousand confirmed cases in. Even assuming the current under…

This is not even close to "first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease", even though such diagnosed & reported cases are relatively rare. Even if you like those "very good odds", do you really think it is smart to risk playing Russian Roulette at 1/1000 odds for a pizza party? More critically, even if you like those odds, all the people you meet when you fail to maintain distance, wear…

I'm coming at this with the assumption that the people I'm talking to are already doing the right thing in that regard. People who aren't taking it seriously enough by this point seem pretty unlikely to listen to anything I say.

Re: Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

#130

Post by jen20 »

asveikau wrote: post #54
sonicggg wrote: post #26

It seems that anecdotal evidence of young people dying of COVID-19 is the trend of the moment. Not sure if it's just cheap clickbait or the goal is to make younger generations to actually care about social distancing. The deal is that we are dealing with the power of large numbers. You can cherry-pick whatever case you want to fit your narrative. It does not mean its relevant information.

People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong. And exactly as you say: if there is a large population of infected people, the absolute number of people who fit in these small percentage tragedies is actually large.

> People think that a low percentage of an outcome means it won't happen. They are wrong.

This was proven by the response to the polls (especially the FiveThirtyEight one) in the 2016 presidential election, surely?

Post reply on HN