Covid-19 Is Hitting the Middle Aged Harder Than We Think
As we open up and go back to work, it’s possible we’ve missed something important — the danger to many 50–64 year olds
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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read that Covid-19 is completely overstated and just hits the elderly. Usually from Wall Street types, not scientists. There’s a narrative that the disease is only dangerous to old people, so everyone else can safely go to work. To the contrary, compared to the flu, it’s much more dangerous for middle aged people than for older people. In fact, Covid-19 is a special threat to many of the people heading back to work — and to bars and restaurants.
It is primarily in these middle years that you are far more likely to die from Covid-19 than the flu. Whereas flu effects the old and the young immune systems, the people in the middle fend it off better. Covid-19 hits those beginning to age much harder.
Death rates look like they will end up ~5x or more than the flu for 45–64 year olds. Because flu is under-reported and under-diagnosed, it may be greater than that.
A study compared H1N1 fatality rates to coronavirus as well:
The British group said the fatality rate among all of those infected with new coronavirus — including those who don’t have symptoms — is 0.66%. By comparison, that is more than 30 times greater than the death rate for the H1N1 influenza, the cause of a 2009 pandemic, which was 0.02%.
Hospitalization rates are also high among the middle aged group.
One issue, of course, is that we don’t all age the same way. Our bodies and our immune systems devolve based on other factors. And those factors start to hit us pretty hard at age 50.
“It is not chronological age alone that determines how one does in the face of a life-threatening infection such as Covid-19,” cautioned geriatrician…
