What is the true infection fatality rate of COVID-19, broken down by age and health status? This is a simple question for which the CDC should have a clear answer by now, accompanied by a readable chart – a chart showing everyone’s demographic risk assessment so that we can better target our infection mitigation efforts. Nobody in Virginia, especially in Cape Charles has bothered to do this either. Wonder why?
The chart below, prepared by the Economisch Statistische Berichten (ESB), a Dutch economics magazine, lays out the infection fatality rate for the Dutch population-based on age bracket. The data were calculated from an antibody test of 4,000 blood donors conducted by Dutch blood bank Sanquin to see how many have been infected for the purpose of donating blood plasma to those currently suffering from the virus. The data were presented to the Dutch House of Representatives in mid-April by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).
Based on this serology test, they were able to determine that 3% of the population (at the time) were infected and were therefore able to divide the numerator of those who died of COVID-19 by the extrapolated denominator of those who were likely infected and break out the infection fatality rate by age group.
From the asymptomatic/mildly symptomatic rates to the hospital and fatality rates divided by age. You have to get to the 50-59 age group just to reach a 0.1% fatality rate, the level often cited as the overall death rate for the seasonal flu. Those are all lower odds than an individual has of dying in a giving year of any cause and in the case of an average 50-year-old, five times lower.
The Netherlands has actually experienced a 30% higher death rate per capita than America. So the numbers are likely not any higher here for those under 70. A brand-new study from France also shows very similar estimates of fatality rates, at least for those under 60.
Another research group in the Netherlands did a second serology test that broke down even more groups and came up with almost identical results:
The death rate doesn’t even climb above .1% until you reach over 70, with a steep growth of risk over 75 and 80. Even those death rates might need to be cut in half for those outside nursing homes, given that half the deaths in most countries are in senior care facilities.
Why has Cape Charles not published data that shows just what the risk really is? Why are we still closed when the risk is very low for people under 60? What are they hiding?
We’ll wait.
Paul Plante says
Speaking as one of the “elderly” in America, I am right there with you on that score.
The elderly in America are not really “cared” for so much as exploited as cash cows, which serves as an incentive to me to take good care of my own health, lest I end up in some hell-hole where the elderly get shoved into to wait to die, while living in a foetid hell.
I had an aunt who ended up in a nursing home, and my goodness, the smell in there of urine and excrement was terrible.
And when I would go see her, invariably there would be some frail old person in a wheelchair sitting in the hallway saying over and over “can somebody help me, can somebody help me, can somebody help me.”
What a way to spend your last days on earth.
David Muir says
You’re concerned about the country’s treatment of the elderly yet you are also happy posting retorts like this on your site: “Lives are in the balance? You really just said that? Correction: Boomer lives are in the balance. Karma.”
Considering that many Boomers are now in their 70s, I figure this is just another case of Creed holding contradictory points of view (like attacking the town council for not shutting down Cape Charles while simultaneously downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic), but you can never be sure. So help us out: Is there a magic cutoff year where you feel we should care about people while wishing another age group dead?
And when you write your venomous little note at the end of my comment, try not to contradict yourself yet again. Take a deep breath, try not to hyper-ventilate, and think it through. The lock-down has been tough but I’m confident you can get through it. It’s not as if you were asked to fight for your country like the fathers of all those Boomers you want dead. Wishing you a reflective Memorial Day.
Note: Unlike some, I don’t talk about my military engagements…been there going on 25 years, still there every day…and I still love it. My venomous comment is that you people put your parents in those places because, like always, you were selfish to give up your lifestyle, so stuck grandma away to rot…it’s all about you…ME ME ME!…now, it really is about you. How’s it feel boomer?
Paul Plante says
As one of America’s frail elderly people, words fail me when it comes to saying how much pleasure I get from reading these types of comments here in the Cape Charles Mirror on a daily basis!
Sure does beat that crap that they show on television by a mile!
So keep up the comments, David Muir, they are so very entertaining it is not funny.
I especially got a kick out of this one, to wit: “Is there a magic cutoff year where you feel we should care about people while wishing another age group dead?”
How that made me guffaw, which is actually good for a frail elderly person in this day and age of COVID, because a good guffaw helps clean out all that icky stuff down there in the bottom of the lungs where the cytokine storms are taking place because of COVID!
Speaking as a frail elderly veteran, I thought this one was a real hoot, as well: “It’s not as if you were asked to fight for your country like the fathers of all those Boomers you want dead.”
While I enlisted, as I remember, a lot of those you make mention of there weren’t asked to fight for their country; they were told they had to when they were drafted.
Just saying.
And as a frail elderly person who is a regular reader of the Mirror, I have never gotten the impression that Wayne Creed wants me dead simply because I am old.
But Mother Nature might, if I get stupid and let my immune system become frail.
And yes, we most certainly have control over the efficacy of our immune systems as we get older, if we want to do the necessary work to maintain them.
“The Eagle’s Gift!”
Certainly you must remember that work by Casteneda.
The eagle is a metaphor for the reaper – when your time is determined to be up, the eagle comes to eat you.
Such it is, David – I can live with it.
Can you?
Paul Plante says
When it comes to killing elderly people, I think David is confusing Wayne Creed for New York’s psychopathic Democratic Socialist governor Andy Cuomo who is doing a real bang-up job of killing elderly people in nursing homes in the corrupt empire of New York.
Paul Plante says
TO: Advance Media NY Editorial Board
As a former associate level public health engineer detailed by then-NYS health commissioner Dr. David Axelrod to clean up endemic public corruption in the Rensselaer County Health Department in 1986, which endemic corruption went back to the 1970s and involved similar corruption at the state health department, I read with interest your recent editorial “NY must own nursing home mistakes, learn from them (Editorial)” posted May 24, 2020.
With respect to holding Cuomo and Zucker accountable, which I don’t see happening in my lifetime, in 2016, I penned a series of writings on that very subject, calling for a grand jury investigation of the failures of the state health department and Andrew Cuomo to protect the health of children in Hoosick Falls, NY, who were drinking water laced with PFOA, which can be found here:
http://thelivyjrfiles.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=139
Needless to say, it is heartening to see your editorial board calling for accountability.
As to the CDC, Andy Cuomo is lying through his teeth when he says the CDC ordered or directed or whatever weasel words he is using that people with COVID be put in nursing homes, a lie so easily debunked simply by going to the CDC site and checking on all their guidance, which on May 8, 2020, Infection Prevention and Control Assessment Tool for Nursing Homes Preparing for COVID-19, stated:
Health departments can use this tool to assess infection prevention practices and guide quality improvement activities (e.g., by addressing identified gaps).
This tool may be used for remote (e.g., by telephone or video chat) or onsite assessment.
This tool may also be used by healthcare facilities to conduct internal quality improvement audits.
Items assessed in the ICAR support the key strategies of:
• Keeping COVID-19 out of the facility
end quotes
Earlier, on April 3, 2020, the CDC issued a comprehensive “Preparedness Checklist for Nursing Homes and Other Long-Term Care Settings,” to wit:
Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities can take steps to assess and improve their preparedness for responding to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
This checklist should be used as one tool to develop a comprehensive COVID-19 response plan, including plans for:
* Rapid identification and management of ill residents
* Considerations for visitors and consultant staff
* Supplies and resources
* Sick leave policies and other occupational health considerations
* Education and training
* Surge capacity for staffing, equipment and supplies, and postmortem care
The checklist identifies key areas that long-term care facilities should consider in their COVID-19 planning.
Long-term care facilities can use this tool to self-assess the strengths and weaknesses of current preparedness efforts.
This checklist does not describe mandatory requirements or standards; rather, it highlights important areas to review to prepare for the possibility of residents with COVID-19.
Nursing home and long-term care facility checklist
Preparedness Checklist for Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care Facilities pdf icon[PDF-1MB]
Infection Control Guidance for Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care Facilities
end quotes
The CDC has no authority to order anything inside NYS, and Andy Cuomo must think we are all illiterate fools or idiots to think or believe otherwise.
The state health department in a word is a joke, and it is worthless and has been since about 1978.
As to how much of a joke on us the state health department is, consider a 10 January 1988 story titled “Developers see a zealot in new county health officer” by Laurie Anderson in the Times Union, wherein was stated “Plante is involved in several fierce feuds with developers, the most public of which involves Anderson, who is attempting to rally the county legislature, Buono, and the state Health Department to make Plante more compliant.”
As we consider the lack of accountability today, we need to meditate for a moment on that phrase “to make Plante more compliant,” with a focus on what the word “compliant” means when applied to someone like myself whose duty it was as the “new county health officer” to protect the groundwater for the people of Hoosick Falls and Rensselaer County.
“Compliant” means willing to turn one’s back and look the other way.
“Compliant” in someone whose duty it was to enforce the Public Health Law in the Rensselaer County Health District means “sleazy” and “untrustworthy.”
But in the political context, “compliant” means politically reliable, willing to accept bribes and look the other way, which I was not, and so I had to go.
And the corruption remained totally unscathed, thanks to the state attorney general and governor Mario Cuomo, who could not have been ignorant of that article, given the role the Times Union plays in state politics in Albany.
Paul Plante says
As I continue to track this COVID CIRCUS CLUSTER****, which is exactly what it is, a true clown show which shows just how incompetent those who supposedly “govern” us have become, a bunch of chickens running around absent their heads, here is an interesting and very relevant data point in that timeline which causes us to have to wonder at exactly what is going on here with respect to these politically-motivated “COVID lock-down” orders, to wit:
“Virginia Department of Health Warns Residents of Increase in Respiratory Illnesses”
July 19, 2019
For More Information Contact
Lorrie Andrew-Spear – 703-530-2627 – Lorrie.Andrew-Spear@VDH.virginia.gov
Virginia Department of Health Warns Residents of Increase in Respiratory Illnesses – Anyone Experiencing Difficulty Breathing Should Seek Medical Care
(Richmond, Va.) – Since the end of flu season in May, the Virginia Department of Health has received increased reports of respiratory (breathing) illness across the Commonwealth greater than observed in previous summers.
Most of the reports have occurred among older adults and those with chronic medical conditions in assisted living and long-term care facilities.
The reports involve different regions of the state and different diseases, including pertussis (whooping cough), influenza, Haemophilus influenzae infection, Legionnaire’s disease, and pneumonia caused by rhinovirus or human metapneumovirus.
“A variety of germs cause respiratory illness, some with increased activity in summer months” said State Health Commissioner M. Norman Oliver, MD, MA.
“We encourage everyone to take steps to minimize the severity and prevent spreading illness to others.”
Dr. Oliver continued, “To avoid getting sick and spreading germs to others, it is important to wash hands thoroughly with soap and water, especially after coughing or sneezing.”
“To help prevent the spread of germs, avoid close contact with people who are sick.”
“Anyone who is sick should stay home, except when seeking medical care.”
“If you develop difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, immediately seek medical care.”
Certain groups are especially vulnerable for developing severe respiratory illness, including young children, adults 65 years or older, those with chronic medical conditions (such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and heart conditions) and those with weakened immune systems.
Extreme heat, like Virginia is currently experiencing, can also be dangerous for older adults and people with heart and lung diseases.
Tips to avoid heat-related illness include drinking plenty of water, keeping cool indoors, dressing for the heat, and limiting physical activity, especially in the middle of the day.
For more information about heat-related illness, see http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/news/public-relations-contacts/severe-weather-preparedness/extreme-heat-and-heat-related-illnesses/.
end quotes
One must wonder why we hear no more about that, and all of a sudden, the villain becomes COVID causing all those same problem the Virginia Health Department was aware of in July of 2019.
Why no lock-down orders for those problems?