The Good News: Covid Lethality By Age

So you might notice we don't worry about 5 year olds getting certain illnesses. Its a well known fact that age is a major factor in many illnesses. But what about Covid 19? Obviously, kids can catch covid 19, though the data seems to indicate this is rare. Whats even more rare is kids dying from covid. How rare you ask?

Source for data above

So let's put this in context.

Your chance of dying in a car accident in your life is about 1 in 100 per the NSC. Or in other words in the next 10 years about 1 in 1000. So what is your chance of dying of Covid if you catch it? Well that varies GREATLY depending on your age.

If I catch covid what is the chance I will die?

5-9 years old = 1 in 62,500

10-19 years old = 1 in 300,000

20-49 years old = 1 in 11,000

50-64 years old = 1 in 700

65+ years old = 1 in 18

Now consider that your risk goes down if you are in better than average health and down if you are in worse than average health for your age. For the vast majority of us what happens is we realize that our risk of dying in our car during the next decade is higher than of us dying from Covid 19 if we were to catch it. However, that does not mean we should be reckless. Covid does post a serious threat to people who are older and in bad health. So what does this mean? It means we all have a responsibility to distance ourselves from the elderly as much as possible and those who are older or who are in poor health should be very careful to avoid contact with this illness until better treatments or vaccines are available.

In sum our strategy should be to protect the vulnerable while the rest of us save the economy and keep society moving as we go through this pandemic. What makes no sense is having a one size fits all solution for an illness that has such drastically different outcomes depending on your age and health.