Calculater: Will Covid Kill You?

 What are the chances you will die if you get COVID? 

About 1% if you are 70 and quite healthy. 

About 3% if you are 80 and have something wrong with you. Most people who are 80 have something wrong.

Marathon finisher at 78

Polls show Biden currently doing better with seniors than Hillary did. It might be because Biden  seniors identify with him. It might also be because seniors in America think that Trump has thrown them under the COVID bus.  

Trump staked his flag: COVID shutdowns are a Democratic nanny state worrywart thing, that Biden is wimpy to wear a mask, and that the virus is an exaggerated threat. Trump represents being courageous and free and getting back to normal. Trump says that if seniors want to shelter they can do so, but don't expect the country to shut down to accommodate such a tiny risk.

Trump's policy decision has electoral consequences. It may increase the turnout among the many White working class people who failed to turn out in 2016, especially in the Upper Midwest swing states. They are a large underdeveloped constituency for Trump. Trump's language on violence and the get-back-to-work message on COVID may keep those crucial states in Trump's camp. That is the obvious Trump strategy and it might work.

There is a flip side, though. Between now and the election seniors may become more conscious of the actual risks to themselves from Trump's policies and decide that a 2% or 4% or higher chance of dying if they catch the disease is just too much. Or not. People do risky things.

Biden has taken--intentionally or not--a "Senior Strategy" in which his policies are clearly friendlier to seniors than are Trump's as regards COVID, and it may mean he can win the states of Arizona and Florida, which means he would need only a single Upper Midwest state to get to 270 electoral votes. That strategy requires seniors to stay worried about COVID. Should they be?

Seniors want to know:  How much risk is Trump putting me in?

https://calculator.covid-age.com

The answer to this is a merger of age and health conditions, which the media describes as "co-morbidities." There are indeed people in their 60's, 70's, 80's and beyond who are in perfect health, although my observation is that in the real world, most people of retirement age have "co-morbidities." 

I suggest readers experiment with the linked Covid Calculator hosted by EveristHealth. My purpose was to see what different risk factors did to ones risk of hospitalization and death, and what were the absolute risks. The questionnaire gets at risk factors, asking ones sex, date of birth, height, weight, waist size, whether one smokes, blood pressure, A1C number (i.e. diabetes), Vitamin D level, and figures for Triglycerides and HDL. It is OK to leave some of these blank.  

The calculator adjusts ones "COVID age" up or down depending on the answers, recalculating ones "age" and therefore likelihood of hospitalization, ICU, or death. It asks if one has cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, lung disease, or if one is immunocompromised. Those move the risks substantially. Adjusting the number of cigarette per day from zero to 30 almost doubles ones mortality risk. Adjusting the weight figure from trim to plump does as well. 

Some results: 

A 30 year old in good health as a 0.02% chance of death, i.e. 2 in 10,000. No wonder they go to bars and hang out with friends. COVID is safer than riding a motorcycle.

A 50 year old man in good health has a 0.17% chance of death, i.e. less than 2 in 1000.

A 75 year old man in good health has a 0.87% chance of death if he gets COVID, and a 85 year old man in good health has a chance of death calculated at 1.7%. 

The risks grow when when one calculates for real Americans as we actually experience most of them, people with health problems. 

If we presume that the 75 year old male is somewhat overweight and has borderline diabetes, but not otherwise ill, his chances of being hospitalized if he catches the virus grow to 11%, of going into ICU to 5.2% and of dying of 2.5%. Lots of 75 year old men fit that profile.

Some 80 year olds run marathons and are in great health, like Jerry Evans in the photo above; most are not. Take an 80 year old man as we frequently see them in America, i.e.  somewhat overweight, with borderline type two diabetes, and some heart problems but under control, or maybe some lung problem from the smoking he did before quitting years prior. That very typical 80 year old's risk of hospitalization is 13%, of going into ICU is 7.6%, and dying is 5.6%. At age 85 with the same conditions his risk of hospitalization is 15%, of ICU is 8.4, and dying is 6.8%.

If the disease is out there and widespread, seniors will get exposed by somebody, and then they take their chances in the COVID death lottery. There are 50 million Americans over age 65, of which 22 million Americans are age 75 and older. If 1.5% of the people from 65 to 75 die from COVID if they get it, it means some 450,000 deaths. If 4% of the people in the 75 and older cohort die from it, we have another 1,000,000 deaths. 

The readers of this blog skew old. Check out your risk factors. Maybe readers will learn that their risk of death is one in twenty and will decide they are OK taking their chances. People assume bad things happen to others, not themselves.

Trump is betting that people are more afraid of urban violence than they are of COVID. Biden is betting on COVID.

Calculate your risk.