So, in the off chance you catch it in the future, God forbid, what do you feel your odds of dying are?
Based on my age ( late 50’s ) gender ( female) weight ( well within normal BMI) and lack of other co-morbidities ( excellent glucose levels and blood pressure) id put my risk as well under 1 percent…maybe .5 percent. But I know people tend to underestimate their risks. I do know several people (about 15) in my upper middle class suburb who had it. All in very very good health ( slim, active with good medical care). Most got it from foreign travel early on. All have fully recovered.
So no speculation as to what you feel your odds of dying are?
My mom about 50% if the lockdown continues whether she gets it or not. The isolation is killing her. 50% may be optimistic.
And in all my reading, talking with friends and family, watching the news, exactly one person is repeatedly suggesting that people who aren’t cowering in fear should just go ahead and infect themselves intentionally. And I still don’t get why he thinks that’s a thing.
I don’t think about individual risk as much as I do about the pandemic spreading when it could be contained because of people refusing to do what was asked of them to help stop the spread, and because we didn’t respond quickly enough, and because we came out of stay home before hitting the markers needed to have things in place to control a resurgence.
But if I think about my odds, I don’t think that there is a standard % chance for people of different ages. I think there are factors not fully known yet (B cell defect could be one I heard) and if a person has that, then his or her odds are probably some very high % likely to have a bad outcome, not just 1 or 2%. So, not knowing enough to know, I couldn’t even venture to guess. I think likely that some are probably 80 or 90% likely and others much less than average chance likely to die depending on a host of things.
I don’t recall anyone saying on here that COVID is no worse than the seasonal flu. Personally, I have long assumed it is about two to three times as “bad,” implying an IFR of 0.2-0.3%. It could be higher, maybe as high as 0.5%. I am open to the evidence as it comes in.
I early on estimated my own personal risk of death at less than 0.1%, and in hindsight that was almost certainly an overestimate. Nevertheless, as the data came I did not have to revisit my decision process. I was personally not going to change my behavior very much in view of the risks I estimated, and now that I believe my actual risk was even lower, I have no regrets because frankly I didn’t do very much to protect myself, other than some basic common sense.
For myself and my family, I assumed this was nothing to be overly concerned about, so we suffered no undue stress or fear. I am not happy about an approximate 15% excess burden of death for a few months (at most), but we are just flesh and blood machines with a very imperfect understanding of our own biology. I never expected government bureaucrats to do a good job, so I have not been disappointed. I still remain beyond grateful to live in this age of wonder, where even 80 year olds expect to live active and fulfilled lives. Never before in the history of humanity have we been so collectively blessed as we are right now.
This virus is just a small bump in a long road. We mourn the dead, and move on, as humanity has been doing for 2000+ generations.
I sometimes get the impression you ask others questions solely so you can continue to repeat that you think we should test, do contact screening, etc. OK, I understand your position. We didn’t do those things for a combination of reasons, including failings of a number of organizations and governments. We are here now, and I think we’re too far down the path - it’s out and there is no federal coordination of testing and tracing - to hang our hats on any of that happening.
And given the missteps and distrust people now have in the WHO, CDC, federal and state governments… we need to acknowledge that situation and how it impacts what is possible, what people here in American will and won’t be willing to do. Some states may be willing to follow WHO guidelines, but there is zero chance of that happening on the federal level right now. Similar issue with the CDC. For better or worse.
I guess we can keep debating if the WHO was on point or not, but as far as the US following WHO recommendations at this point I think that it’s a moot point.
Best care probably around 0.1%, worst case probably somewhat over 1%. There is not enough information to make a better estimate.
However, the almost completely unknown level of risk of long term damage or disability is something that most discussions, media reports, etc. seem to be ignoring, even though it is likely to be substantially higher than death. Some of the types of longer term damage or disability would also increase chance of dying of something else later.
We know that hospitalization rates increase by age: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm . But do we know what percentage of hospitalized patients who recover do so with long term damage or disability? We know that some non-hospitalized infected people have long term damage or disability as well. But there is still too little information to make any reasonable guess about the risk of that.
Unfortunately, LA has opened for business, so the are probably doing the opposite. That said, the local health department claimed that the big increase was getting thru a backlog of previous tests. (CA is still behind other states on testing.) And, the positivity rate of LA testing is still doing down.
So, the people in nursing homes in Maryland that have tested positive, apparently our most vulnerable, have had a 20% death rate. Yes, those are horrible odds but those are probably top of the heap worst case scenario. Some may have been asymptomatic and or had not been tested but in that population I figure these numbers are pretty close. I’m not sure any group would have higher odds of dying then these worst case people. Caregivers in these exact same nursing homes by comparison have a .5% chance of dying, and they are front line workers.
It’s just interesting seeing how people may be calculating their odds.
I’m basing mine off of my age groups statistics and my general health.
What’s the point of this? Ever since the first numbers came out of South Korea (who was doing heavy testing) we knew the death rate for this across the population was low. Under 1% for most, but 10% or more for older people or people with serious health conditions. But we knew it spread like wildfire and didn’t know much about the quality of life of survivors (still don’t, BTW). Those of us can do exponential math, or at least understand it, knew that we had to do some partial shutdowns to stop the exponential spread since we HAD NO TESTING (because of government failure) and couldn’t do testing/tracing/local quarantining.
The moving of the goalposts is a real thing and needs to stop. We cannot keep everyone at home in the same way we did in March during the peak of this crisis, so we need to focus on what we CAN do to mitigate. We have to live with this until there is a vaccine and do our best to stop the spread.
I have no idea what my odds are and I don’t want want to find out, so I’ll keep doing exactly what I’m doing.
I get a flu shot so I won’t get the flu (hopefully) and to help protect those who cannot get a flu shot. I got the pneumonia shot so I (hopefully) won’t get that either.
Since a vaccine isn’t available yet for Covid-19, I’m doing what medical experts, public health officials, virologist and epidemiologist all recommend to stay safe and reduce the spread of the virus. I don’t want anything I do, regardless of the risk to me, to endanger another person by spreading the virus.
We went to a drive in concert tonight at a big ag center complex 15 minutes from our house. Only masks in sight were on the parking attendants (getting the cars lined up and properly distanced). People were advised to stay in the area of their cars. Some set up folding chairs in front of the cars in their spaces. We stayed in our car to better hear the FM broadcast of the concert. There were big screens up so you could see, since most of the cars couldn’t really see the stage. Very unique event. They had some portolets, but I managed to avoid that. The car and people next to us were within 6 feet door to door, but it all felt fine.
I’ve already beaten “the odds” once by getting a brain tumor. My mom beat the odds getting a male smoker’s cancer (she’s not male, never smoked, nor did my dad, nor was she in a smoking work environment). The next group to get her cancer are heavy drinkers. I’ve never seen my mom tipsy, much less drunk. She only had an occasional glass of wine with fancy dinners.
Oh, and some of the side effects I already get to live with, likely for life, my doctors (from Johns Hopkins) hadn’t seen before and thought would go away.
Odds are meaningless to an individual. They only work for large groups.
I estimated my personal risk on the basis of age, known co morbidities, and lifestyle. As I have not had the flu nor needed to take an antibiotic for an infection in well over 25 years, I figure whatever I have been doing is working at protecting me from most viral infections. Same story for wife and kids, although S21 and wife did get the swine flu a decade ago (recovered fine without any medical intervention). I had no symptoms despite taking care of them (and sleeping in the same bed with my wife).
I can’t even remember the last time I got a cold, but it has to be years. So, this history helped inform my personal estimate of risk.
I guess the point is that we all have some sort of idea about what our personal odds of dying are if we catch this. It’s just interesting to try to understand what goes into that. It’s not meant to be anything negative. I think my guess is probably high but it might not be.
People used to do that with smallpox to get immunity before the vaccine was available. More recently, there were pox parties for the chicken pox before the vaccine for that was available (indeed, the point of that was the chicken pox is mild in kids, but risk increases at higher ages, similar to COVID-19). Even more recently, the Shingrix vaccine causes many people to feel sick for a few days, but people get it anyway to reduce the chance of having shingles.
If I actually believed that the personal risk of COVID-19 (not just death but also longer term disability) were very low (enough to be ignored in daily activity) as some have been claiming, I would consider “scheduling” an intentional infection at the least inconvenient time to self-isolate, so that I could gain immunity both for myself and to be able to interact with elderly relatives and other higher-risk people without being a potential vector. But I do not believe that the risk is low enough to do that, or ignore the risk of getting the virus in indoor enclosed spaces, etc…
Fair enough. I’m glad you were able to beat the odds.
At this point, I’m guessing the odds of dying from this are becoming vanishingly small. Way more likely to veer off one of the remarkably narrow road shoulders around here or that the tractor or backhoe will kill me.
Has anyone noticed that: while the number of daily new cases on Worldometer continues to rise, daily deaths continue to fall?
I understand you don’t want to spread it to other people and are taking steps to avoid that.
My question wasn’t meant to take any of that away or say it wasn’t needed or effective. Keep up the good work.