Define "very low". I think the "half a percent" number can seem "artificially" low because it's just looking at the probability of death in a single year. Looking at US actuarial tables, even an 80 year old has an annual chance of death of less than 5%. Just looking at that number alone may make one think that is a "low" death rate, but nobody is surprised when an 80 year-old dies.

I’m surprised it is as high as you claim! You’re saying that for that age group, in a given year, the chances are 1 in 200 of dying? That seems like pretty bad odds on something that is literally life and death.

Assuming risk is evenly distributed between birth and death, you would expect a 1 in 80 chance of dying in any given year. But since the risk is loaded towards the later years of life, 1 in 200 during the earlier years sounds about right. Perhaps it's 2x higher than I would have guessed otherwise, but it's the right order of magnitude.

No that is bad math around 1/80.

If the average person had a 1/80 chance to die each year, the average life expectancy would be 40 years.

Think about this another way. You have a gun with 80 chambers and 1 bullet. How many times on average can you point it at your head and pull the trigger before it goes off? Would you still argue 80 times? On average it is the last chamber?

That's not how it works. For a geometric distribution with p=1/80 the mean or expected value is indeed 80.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution

Your gun example has a uniform distribution between 1 and 80 with an expected value of roughly 40 if you don't spin the chamber each time between pulling the trigger. If you spin it each time, then it's again the geometric distribution and the expected value is 80.

If you don't spin the chamber between each time, then each time you pull the trigger the probability of dying at that round is not 1/80, the probability goes up and up at each round, it's only 1/80 on the first round.

"evenly distributed" implies uniform distribution

To be fair, they said the risks are evenly distributed, not that deaths are.

I had the same initial thought, but this isn't quite a perfect model... that distribution averaging assumes that the only factor at play is covid... but there are other chances of death with highly irregular probability distributions as a function of age... with other nonlinear weightings as a function of age you could get pretty different numbers in the end...

Your last example is not applicable.

The question is comparable to a gun with infinitely many chambers, each with a 1/80 chance of containing a bullet: How many times on average can you point it at your head and pull the trigger? The differences are that you have no guarantee that the first 80 chambers will contain exactly 1 bullet, that more than one chamber can contain a bullet, and that you can pull the trigger more than 80 times.

Are you sure? Is it not the same as this: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1009490/average-num...

E = p/(1-p)

So pretty close to 80 years, no?

I guess it gets more complicated because you'd die of other reasons as you age so there's no point including the eventualities where you reached 120 for example... I guess it gets pretty complicated in the end...

I think motor vehicle related mortality really shifts the risk forward.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html has the actuarial table by age, which is indeed a base rate above 0.002 from age 46 onward.

That's true, but 0.002 is 1/500, not 1/200.

Wow, remarkably the Queen, who is 95, is unlikely to make it to 100. In fact her annual hurdle rate is greater than 1/5. Am I reading this wrong?

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html confirms that. In the US, it's about 1 in 400 for men at 40, 1 in 600 for women; at 50 it's 1 in 200 for men and 1 in 300 for women; and at 60 it's 1 in 90 for men, 1 in 150 for women. About 17% of US men, and 11% of US women, who make it to 40 are dead before 66. These are all pre-covid rates (from 02017).

How old are you? How many people from your high school years have passed? Say, in your year and the years adjacent, where you might be told the news?

Out of about 90, I can count 4. Graduated 1999. 1 in 200 per year sounds like it might be ballpark, though of course from my limited set it's hard to tell. Assuming the rate is low at around 40 but a fair bit lower when you've just graduated, and a fair bit higher as you pass 60.

Probably highly skewed to the upper end of that age range.

Well, also consider that people live to be roughly ~100 years old. The population is roughly stable, so every year ~1% of the population must die and be replaced by a ~1% is born.

think of it this way, 1 in 200 means the chance that you will not die is 99.5% When put that way, sounds pretty good, right?

Think of it this way, 1 in 200 means the chance that you will die is 10x worse than that of someone base jumping[0]. When put this way, sounds pretty bad, right?

[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17495709/

No, I mean, 1 in 200 chance here refers to living, which includes all activities, including BASE jumping

Half a percent is Russian roulette with 2.9 do-overs.

People really need to multiply that death rate against a population of people who are likely to be infected. And they are skipping this step for whatever reason.

A death rate of 20% isn’t bad if it’s a rare disease that has a 10 cases worldwide (2 deaths), whereas a 0.2% death rate is devastating for a highly contagious virus that spreads rapidly over the planet (millions of deaths)

That was already done, and specified in the comment.

>>“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”

In fact, it was the entire point of the article - this disease is so bad because the entire population of people is subject to infection, and the death and disability rate is very substantial.

>>whereas a 0.2% death rate is devastating for a highly contagious virus that spreads rapidly over the planet (millions of deaths)

We've got that. Here. In this topic and case.

So, I'm really struggling to see the point of the comment. ?

> a significant portion end up losing 7-10 IQ points just from dementia

There probably is an IQ drop, but I question this figure. I recall a study doing the rounds here which showed this figure as a ballpark and it was very low quality.

From direct accounts, the figure is likely low. A good attorney friend has a friend who used to be one of the sharpest and most witty attorneys he knew. Months after a "mild case" (no hospitalization), the friend is not all there, fading in and out - he'll literally fade in and make a witty comment almost like before, then seconds later not remember it..., and hasn't been able to get back to work. That sounds like a lot more than 10 points, more like 140->95.

Even if the effects are temporary, and even if it's "only five points", I'm not interested in that risk, and you shouldn't be either.

Was that attorney vaxxed?

> I'm not interested in that risk, and you shouldn't be either.

Well, I share your anxiety about it at least. It's my biggest concern about COVID as a young person. Even 2 points is too much given the asymmetric payoff at the margin.

IIRC, he got it before the vaccines were available. I'll check the next time I chat with my friend.

>>Even 2 points is too much given the asymmetric payoff at the margin.

YUP!! It feels like for someone close to 100, 5 points lower would be a loss putting them suddenly below a huge group they were ahead of, and for someone close to 140, 5 points lower would be a huge step down in overall capability, even though the group they are suddenly below is not that large. Either way, both the studies about the CV-19 clotting issues and mini-strokes, and that it is now known to infect, thrive in, and kill central nervos system cells is really scary.

Just the fact that one of the first things to go is the sense of smell - that's one of the oldest and most core neural pathways, leading right into the brain core. And the phnomena of patients recovering their sense of smell for a while and then it going off so that every smell/taste is like gasoline or rotting pork so they lose 30Lbs in 3 months is horrifying enough, but when I consider what it's likely doing to the brain (neuroscience was my minor in college), that just gives me the creeps. I'll take plague instead, thanks, at least it's just ordinary misery.

Edit: Here's a new interesting point - "Long covid with neuro symptoms:

Not real enough to be factored in to disease prevention plans

Real enough for drug trials"

https://twitter.com/DFisman/status/1477732646130106368

I'm curious what this drug is trying to do. You can see COVID brain damage on an FMRI, not sure how a drug is supposed to reverse that.

Indeed! I'm very curious about that too.