America starts talking seriously about the number of Coronavirus fatalities.
Epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently forecasted death of between 200,000 to 1.7 million.
According to a NYT article and based on Dr. James Lawler, a public health researcher from the University of Nebraska, assuming an infection rate of 30% and a fatality rate of 0.5%, 480,000 American are going to die over the course of the illness. As can be seen, Dr. Lawler's estimates are at the optimistic range.
How is this virus compared to other major killers?
Taking into account Dr. Lawler model, Coronavirus deaths is higher than the number who die in a year from dementia, emphysema, stroke or diabetes. This is by taking into account the entire US population. Only cancer and heart diseases kill more people.
Published in the NYT, source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
But not less interested is the effect on American of different ages.
The evidence so for suggests that most of deaths are among the oldest people (in Italy, the average age of death from the virus is 81).
Assuming that fatality rates by age are distributed in the same proportions as those observed in Hubei, here is where Coronavirus deaths would rank among different age groups:
Coronavirus expected deaths, different age groups
While the Coronavirus death toll is higher among older people, this group has a higher death rate from other diseases as well.
But maybe more surprising is that it could also rank among the top causes of death for younger people!
For example, the virus is ranked 4 at ages 40-49, and 3 at ages 50-59 and 60-69.
The Coronavirus death toll of people who are 30-49 years old, is about 40% of cancer deaths for the same age groups.
So how is that young people at 30-49 are quite worried dying from cancer, but are not worried too much dying from Coronavirus?
Why are we so complacent?
Our brain is wired to compare ourselves to the average. I'm better or worse than the average. Champion or looser.
And when the picture we have in our mind of old Italian people dying from Coronavirus, our immediate react is – this isn't me. Keep calm.
But while this approach can be not a bad rule of thumb for indicating how we are doing in basketball, work, weight or politics, it can be highly misleading when it comes to life and death issues. As can be seen.
Younger people you are at risk.
Wakeup!
