ON April 20 in an editorial titled Lock down all boomers and the sick! we wrote: “As of Friday, April 17, 2020, 84 percent of all deaths in New York state are people 60 years of age and older. That means that less than two in 10 of those hospitalized who die are under 60 years of age.”
Here we are 25 days later and the hard evidence clearly supports the following conclusion. If you are old or sick from a serious health condition, the odds of you contracting the Covid-19 and subsequently dying are much higher than with the general population. If you are over 60 years of age and also suffering from a serious pre-existing condition, the probability of you dying is extremely high.
The northern German port city of Hamburg currently has recorded 223 fatalities. The head of Hamburg forensic medicine, Professor Klaus Püschel, said this last week: “Nobody has died of Covid-19 in Hamburg without previous illness.” From the Hamburg Morning Post newspaper: “Püschel and his team have already gained initial insights: So far, not a single person with no previous illness has died of the virus in Hamburg.
“All of those we have examined so far have had cancer, a chronic lung disease, were heavy smokers or heavily obese, suffered from diabetes or had a cardiovascular disease.”
In Cook County where Chicago is located, the Medical Examiner’s office reveals that 92 percent of victims from the virus had preexisting medical conditions.
It is a given that viruses negatively affect the immune system. Further, an unhealthy person with a weakened immune system is more likely to fall prey. A virus attacks and often kills the weak.
As a general rule, the elderly are less prone to become sick from common strains of viruses. Children seem to have a cold every other week. Older people have been attacked so many times that their bodies have, or can more easily manufacture, the antibodies to kill an existing virus. But this is not so with the “new” Covid-19 strain.
The fatality age gap is nearly global. In the United Kingdom, 78 percent of all deaths are over 65 years of age.
In Germany, nearly 90 percent of the Covid-19 deaths are those 60 years or older. The same is true for Japan. In the Netherlands, 80 percent of the deaths are people over 70 years old, while in Spain 65 percent of fatalities have occurred in those 80 or older. The same is true in Brazil, with 85 percent of the deaths in the over 60 years of age, and 95 percent in that age group in Italy.
We wrote in April that assuming there are 13 million people in Metro Manila, the seriously at-risk group—the “over 60”—is less than 1 million or about 9 percent.
Almost a month later the Department Of Health statistics show the same as in the other countries. Out of 772 Covid-19 deaths reported two days ago, 67.6 percent or 523 deaths occurred in the 60 and above age cohort.
Must we protect our senior citizens from the pandemic? Absolutely and without question. Is a general and massive lockdown with relatively random testing the best way to do that? Maybe it would have been more efficient to test the seniors and their family members and friends. Then decide who needs to be under lockdown.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano