Test results need to be
immediate and treatment of symptoms also needs to be immediate to avoid further
progression, hospitalization and unnecessary costs. See below.
Time is Running Out for Coronavirus Course
Correction, By William Sullivan, 7/17/20,
American Thinker.
Let's begin with a fact that
undoubtedly contradicts the hysterics that you've routinely heard about the viral
pandemic of 2020 — COVID-19 is anything but an indiscriminate killer of those
infected by it.
A new study, released by the CDC on
July 10, finds that the median age of death where COVID-19 is involved is 78. Mathematically,
what this means is that half of the people who have died with COVID-19 were
over the age of 78, while the other half who have died were younger than 78.
That might sound normal,
given that 78 is the statistical life expectancy for
Americans. But we can glean vital information about the actual
threat of COVID-19 from that statistic alone. Data show that there
are around 22 million Americans who are 75 or older
living in America. This means that roughly seven percent of our
population (of ~328 million) is over the age of 75, and this logically yields
an assumption that the other 93 percent is south of that age.
Here's the first of a few
inconvenient yet undeniable truths. Half of the deaths attributed to
COVID-19 have occurred among less than seven percent of the population, and the
other half occurred among the other 93 percent of the
population. Already, we have a pretty good idea as to who is most at
risk when it comes to the risks of infection.
But we can actually
demographically narrow down COVID-19 victims much more closely than
that. Not only are those dying with COVID-19 often quite old, but
they're usually very unhealthy as well. According to this same CDC
study, over 75 percent of those who've died with COVID-19 had one or more
"underlying medical conditions," and over half of them had two or
more such conditions, defined in the study's footnotes as "cardiovascular
disease, diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease (including end-stage renal
disease), neurologic conditions, immunosuppression, chronic liver conditions,
or obesity." All of these, it should be noted, can be
life-threatening conditions, even without the introduction of a novel
coronavirus.
This is all critical information that's
often been left out of the media's breathless reporting throughout the spring
and summer about how everyone might die if young or healthy people are allowed
to visit bars or restaurants.
Here's another crucial bit of
information that you won't often hear. According to the New York Times, 42 percent
of all COVID-19 deaths occurred among those who were "at some 14,000"
nursing homes in America. Separate data from the CDC show that, in 2016, only 1.3 million Americans lived in
America's 15,600 nursing homes.
Let's recap what the available data have
shown us so far. Those dying of COVID-19 are overwhelmingly very old
and most often very unhealthy, and nearly half of them lived in nursing homes,
where less than one-half of one percent of our country's population
lives. Though the media seem uninterested in reporting any of that,
we know well, and as near to precision as we might expect in a viral pandemic,
whom COVID-19 actually kills.
Equally well, the data show us whom it
does not kill.
Provisional data on COVID-19 deaths can
be downloaded at the CDC, and my recent observations in perusing
that data are worth noting in today's environment, where there are widespread
suggestions not to open our children's schools for classes in the fall.
Consider the below data, the most recent
on the CDC website:
|
Age Demographic
|
Sum of COVID-19
Deaths (2/1/20 through 7/8/20)
|
|
Under 1 year
|
9
|
|
1–4 years
|
7
|
|
5–14 years
|
14
|
|
15–24 years
|
149
|
|
25–34 years
|
795
|
|
35–44 years
|
2,026
|
|
45–54 years
|
5,650
|
|
55–64 years
|
13,808
|
|
65–74 years
|
23,866
|
|
75–84 years
|
30,369
|
|
85 years and over
|
38,048
|
|
Total COVID-19
Deaths
|
114,741
|
We
notice that roughly four in
five deaths occur over the age of 65. That's consistent with, say, influenza deaths in 2017–18. But a quick
look at the other side of the spectrum yields what may be surprising
conclusions that contradict the media narrative that your friends and neighbors
may have imbibed wholesale.
Between the ages of zero and 24, we find
that there has been a sum of 179 provisional COVID-19 deaths. None
of this is meant to diminish the tragedy of these deaths, I want to be
clear. But despite the much higher number of deaths attributed to
COVID-19 in 2020 than we'd find in an example of a bad flu season like
2017–2018, we find that this number of deaths among youth demographics is strikingly
low by comparison.
The CDC's age demographic breakdown of
2017–18 flu season deaths is not identical to the COVID-19 data, but it's
informative. In that flu season, influenza is estimated to have
killed 643 children between the ages of zero and 17.
|
Age Demographic
|
Estimated Number of
Influenza Deaths (2017-18)
|
|
0–4 years
|
115
|
|
5–17 years
|
528
|
|
18–49 years
|
2,803
|
|
50–64 years
|
6,751
|
|
65 years and older
|
50,903
|
|
Total Influenza
Deaths
|
61,100
|
This
comparison excludes the 18–24 age demographic for tallying estimated influenza deaths, yet
despite the generous comparison, more than three times as many children aged
zero to 17 are estimated to have died of influenza in 2017–18 than have died
with COVID-19 in the child/young adult statistical age category of zero to 24
so far in 2020.
What this all tells us isn't the answer
to some mystery. We know, specifically, who is statistically at risk
and who is not statistically at risk. If you're older, or have
serious underlying medical conditions, or live in a nursing home, you're far
more likely to die from COVID-19 infection than a healthy person visiting a bar
or restaurant or a child going to school.
In an article that I've referenced
several times (here, here, here), noted epidemiologist Dr. David Katz didn't need to see
all these data I've referenced to give America the prescription we needed back
on March 20 in the New York Times. Using only very early American
data and foreign data (the best of which came from South Korea), he concluded
that our data were "entirely aligned with data from other
countries." He continued:
The deaths have been
mainly clustered among the elderly, those with
significant chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, and those in
both groups.
This is not true of infectious scourges such as influenza. The
flu hits the elderly and chronically ill hard, too, but it also kills children[.]
...
The clustering of complications and death from
Covid-19 among the elderly and chronically ill, but not children (there have
been only very rare deaths in children),
suggests that we could achieve the crucial goals of social distancing — saving
lives and not overwhelming our medical system — by preferentially protecting
the medically frail and those over age 60, and in particular those over 70 and
80, from exposure.
He suggests that we should not shut down
schools or the economy, favoring a more "surgical" approach of
protecting those most at risk. In an incident of pure prescience, he
writes:
There is another and much overlooked liability in
this [social and economic lockdown] approach. If we succeed in
slowing the spread of coronavirus from torrent to trickle, then when does the society-wide
disruption end? When will it be safe for
healthy children and younger teachers to return to school, much less older
teachers and teachers with chronic illnesses? When will it be safe
for the work force to repopulate the workplace, given that some are in the
at-risk group for severe infection?
When would it be safe to visit loved ones in nursing
homes or hospitals? When once again might grandparents pick up their
grandchildren?
There are many possible answers, but the most likely
one is: We just don't know. We could wait until there's an effective
treatment, a vaccine or transmission rates fall to undetectable
levels. But what if those are a year or more away? Then
we suffer the full extent of societal disruption the virus might cause for all
those months. The costs, not just in money, are staggering to
contemplate.
So what is the alternative? Well, we could
focus our resources on testing and protecting, in every way possible, all those
people the data indicate are especially vulnerable to severe infection: the
elderly, people with chronic diseases and the immunologically compromised.
We failed to heed this advice back in
March. It's too late now to avoid many of the "staggering costs"
of this calamitous policy failure that Americans will lament for decades to
come. Fairly or unfairly, it will be President Trump whom future
generations will associate with this epic calamity. There's little
that can be done about any of that now. But all of the observed data
available today only strengthen Dr. Katz's assertions and early policy
prescriptions. For the sake of our parents, our children, and
countrymen who are suffering from this unprecedented "societal
disruption," we need to wake up from the media's trance, observe the
reality in front of our eyes, and act upon his sage advice immediately.
If Trump is wise, he'll sideline Dr.
Fauci, who's been wrong about virtually everything, and follow the advice of
Dr. Katz, who appears to have been wrong about nothing so far.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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