Live data from Hacker News

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

yorkshirecoastradio.com

141–150 of 167 posts

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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the 99% statistic. It is hard to imagine that any measurement, where errors and odd cases are inevitable, is almost exactly 100%

It sounds like you've understood it correctly. The data strongly suggests that COVID-19 isn't a deadly disease for otherwise healthy people, and any apparently healthy young people who die from it are most likely "errors and odd cases". (Although framing it that way could imply too strong of a conclusion - comorbidities in the study include hypertension and diabetes, which aren't exactly rare.)

The hospitalization rates for younger people in Italy and NYC don’t paint such a rosy picture though. While deaths are rare, it’s still a very nasty disease for many younger people, and we don’t have much data yet on potential long term effects.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 --…

Absolutely there is huge sampling bias in testing. This is true over the entire world.

No one knows what percent of the broader population in Italy have been infected, asymptomatic or otherwise.

We can hope the number is closer to 1 million or 10 million than it is to 100,000. Because you can’t hide the severe and critical cases, a wider incidence means a lower severity. But we have no scientific data on this absolutely crucial statistic.

The only proxy we have is the positive rate for tests that are performed. Recently it was reported that the positive testing rate in NYC was as a high as 28%. This implies that the general population infection incidence is extremely high, e.g. several million cases in NYC. Ideally you would want to see a positive test rate closer to 1-3%.

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

#143
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, my parents keep bringing up this narrative every time we talk on the phone. I've reminded them that while me and my fiance dutifully haven't left the house since last Sunday they've happily gone to the grocery store multiple times, attended a funeral, and had wine at their neighbor's house. They also refused to stop babysitting my niece and nephew until I called my brother and convinced him to stop dropp…

I've been hearing "I rather die from Coronavirus than live my life in fear of it" from some at risk people who don't wish to isolate. Which I suppose is their decision. They'll unfortunately change their tack pretty fast when it becomes hard to breathe.

It's not about living in fear. We're not quarantined because of fear. We're quarantined because of knowledge - we know how contagious this is, we know what the hospitalization rates are, we know our medical resources will be quickly depleted and we know how to slow the spread until we're better able to respond. The question we need to ask ourselves is why weren't we prepared?

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

#144
post #107

Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the WHO's Director General, in [1]: One of the things that terrifies me now is, as this is spread in the west is, there’s this sense of invulnerability among millennials. And absolutely not. Ten percent of the people who are in [intensive care units] in Italy are in their 20s, 30s or 40s. These are young, healthy people with no co-morbidities, no other diseases. We don’t understand wh…

On what planet is someone in their late 30s-40s considered young? 40s is prime midlife crisis age for crying out loud. Lumping them in is a clear attempt to push a narrative.

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

#145
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that this is a single datapoint out of nearly 20k deaths. Are the odds of dying young with zero pre-existing conditions on the order of 1:20k, or exactly zero ? Is death from covid rare or impossible ?

Most of what I've seen so far seems to suggest it works more like AIDs, where it weakens something (in this case, epithelial cells in the lungs) which allows other opportunistic issues to arise (bacterial pneumonia for example). So rather than dying "from the virus", you die from another underlying issue. Similar to how AIDs doesn't kill you, it just makes it easier for everything else to kill you

We have a choice here: strongly hold onto generalizations derived from early analysis, or keep an open mind about new developments in the rapidly growing data. By all means folks should scrutinize these developments as they arrived, but we should keep Dunning-Kreuger in mind: there's a whole lot we don't know about this virus.

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

#146
post #138
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is relevant information when the previous narrative was that 0 young people had died of COVID, and that the “only” old people who had died had co-morbidity factors. BTW, this isn’t “anecdotal evidence”. This is an actual, verifiable data point.

Anecdotal doesn’t mean a lie. Anecdotal means n=1, or more broadly, trying to extrapolate from a narrow sample to draw a broad conclusion. This meets the exact definition of anecdotal . You’ve moved the goalposts to say that if it kills even one young person then young people generally are at risk. The claim was never that zero young people have died. Just vanishingly few. DR. BIRX (March 23, 2020): "In the mortality…

> Anecdotal means n=1

No, that is incorrect. It has nothing to do with the size of the sample.

"Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes: evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

"Anecdotal" also means data that is not verifiable. In this case, the data is verifiable even if the news spread via Facebook.

> trying to extrapolate from a narrow sample to draw a broad conclusion. [...] You've moved the goalposts to say that if it kills even one young person then young people are generally at risk.

I did not draw a broad conclusion, I stated clearly in this thread that this is one sample, and old people are at much higher risk. So did the article. You are constructing a straw man argument that doesn't accurately reflect or counter my point of view.

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

#147
post #2

Her aunt is the one claiming she had no pre-existing conditions. I'd like to see a statement from a medical professional and an autopsy

Yeah. No known preexisting conditions is very different from no preexisting conditions. That being said, it's certainly possible that she was just unlucky and the virus hit her harder than normal for people her age, or she caught some other bug at the same time.

The thing is how do you know you don't have any commodities. Specially if you're in your 20s lots of congenital defects might have not had the chance to be a problem.

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

#148
post #32

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.

Anecdotally, my parents keep bringing up this narrative every time we talk on the phone. I've reminded them that while me and my fiance dutifully haven't left the house since last Sunday they've happily gone to the grocery store multiple times, attended a funeral, and had wine at their neighbor's house. They also refused to stop babysitting my niece and nephew until I called my brother and convinced him to stop dropp…

Don't meet anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence.

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hearing "I rather die from Coronavirus than live my life in fear of it" from some at risk people who don't wish to isolate. Which I suppose is their decision. They'll unfortunately change their tack pretty fast when it becomes hard to breathe.

It's not about living in fear. We're not quarantined because of fear. We're quarantined because of knowledge - we know how contagious this is, we know what the hospitalization rates are, we know our medical resources will be quickly depleted and we know how to slow the spread until we're better able to respond. The question we need to ask ourselves is why weren't we prepared?

The fear is of the unknown chance that it will be serious for you or someone close to you. I think everyone is resigned to the fact that they'll get it eventually.

Personally, I'm more in fear of having some non-coronavirus related emergency and not being to get good healthcare.

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

#150
post #107

Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the WHO's Director General, in [1]: One of the things that terrifies me now is, as this is spread in the west is, there’s this sense of invulnerability among millennials. And absolutely not. Ten percent of the people who are in [intensive care units] in Italy are in their 20s, 30s or 40s. These are young, healthy people with no co-morbidities, no other diseases. We don’t understand wh…

On what planet is someone in their late 30s-40s considered young? 40s is prime midlife crisis age for crying out loud. Lumping them in is a clear attempt to push a narrative.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN