Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

Graham wrote:

I simply countered @Malibuflyer’s obviously incorrect assertion that no-one at all is well equipped to deal with the virus by pointing out that the vast majority of people actually are, with reference to 99% of otherwise-healthy <60s.

There is a significant share of Post-Acute Covid patients with medium term symptoms (not enough time passed yet for real long term statements) even amongst those not hospitalized in the acute phase. Numbers are shaky as all Covid numbers but it is very obvious that we are talking about a double digit percentage (e.g. here ).
We are just beginning to realize the true impact of Covid on population health.

The myth that “Covid is only dangerous for the weak and fat” is as real as the myth that “GA flying is only dangerous for the others”.

Germany

Malibuflyer wrote:

There is a significant share of Post-Acute Covid patients with medium term symptoms

I don’t doubt it. But for the population I was referring to, the risk of acute Covid-19 is negligible in the first place. Without acute Covid-19, there is no post-acute situation. Your source examines ‘non-hospitalised long-haulers’ who again are a very small proportion of those infected. There is no way that a double-digit percentage of people infected with Covid-19 experience anything beyond a mild cold that has zero effect on the rest of their lives. Perhaps you’re getting hung up on data from the very small number of people whose experience of Covid-19 brings them into contact with a healthcare system or a clinical study and forgetting about the tens or hundreds of millions of cases which, while they might be tracked as existing to some greater or lesser extent, have zero healthcare consequence.

Malibuflyer wrote:

the myth that “GA flying is only dangerous for the others”

In fact it is – or at least much more dangerous for ‘the others’ – as long as you take care to remain careful, diligent and competent. What we strive for is to guard against the complacency that would cause us to move from the majority with a relatively low risk to the minority with a high risk. One effective way to do this is to consider yourself high risk and mitigate / act accordingly.

I feel the uneven distribution of risk concept may be lost on some here.

Last Edited by Graham at 22 Nov 18:46
EGLM & EGTN

Graham wrote:

The other thing that dramatically lowers an individual’s risk is not having any of the most prominent lifestyle-related comorbidities in Western society.

Of all the people I know by now who are sick (and currently I see a massive outbreak right around me, apart from the situation in BG which is totally out of control) NONE are fat, all of them are below 50 and all of them are (were) fit. So the whole story about it being an illness for the fat and lazy appears to be old news from the 1st and 2nd wave. Right now, most of those are vaccinated so it becomes apparent that more and more young and in your book immune folks get sick, including people who have been sick before and thought it is enough not to vaccinate. It isn’t.
(and let me list them, without giving away their details as some read here) One swimming instructor, one guy running track and field, one guy doing paragliding by first running up mountains carrying his shute, one guy who runs his two dobermans into the ground, two women who have bmis in the low 20ties and bike to work every day, you need more? ) 2 of those are in hospital right now and as it’s been only about a week nobody knows where they will end up. ) Those in hospital are unvaccinated, the others aren’t doing too well either.

Malibuflyer wrote:

We are just beginning to realize the true impact of Covid on population health.

You can say that again. Well, that is, many of us have been quite ahead of those in denial about this for quite some time. Especcially those who have had close encounters with it or lost people they knew.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Of all the people I know by now who are sick (and currently I see a massive outbreak right around me, apart from the situation in BG which is totally out of control) NONE are fat, all of them are below 50 and all of them are (were) fit. So the whole story about it being an illness for the fat and lazy appears to be old news from the 1st and 2nd wave. Right now, most of those are vaccinated so it becomes apparent that more and more young and in your book immune folks get sick, including people who have been sick before and thought it is enough not to vaccinate. It isn’t.

The people you know (or are aware of, or have been told dramatic stories about) are not a representative sample of the population, and the plural of anecdote is not data.

Hospital data is clear enough that the vast majority of those in hospital with Covid-19 are either very elderly or have comorbidities of the sort I already described. The fit and young in hospital with Covid-19 make the news because of their rarity. That was the case at the start and it’s the case now, but now there are far fewer overall because of the vaccines.

Obviously on a per-100,000 basis the unvaccinated are also incredibly over-represented in hospital, but this is to be expected. The vaccines are phenomenally effective at preventing people becoming ill, even if the effect on transmission is not what was hoped for.

But by all means keep telling yourself that lifestyle diseases are not a significant risk factor if it makes you feel better.

Last Edited by Graham at 22 Nov 21:43
EGLM & EGTN

Graham wrote:

Hospital data is clear enough that the vast majority of those in hospital with Covid-19 are either very elderly or have comorbidities of the sort I already described.

The “very elderly” and “those with comorbidities” are largely the same group of people. This NIHR link presents a breakdown of comorbidity by age, as does this AgeUK link. This is Figure 8 from the Age UK pdf.

Neither source says much about younger people, but extrapolating Figure 8 backwards, and from everyday experience, it looks like less of a problem.

Of course, not every comorbidity may increase Covid risk, but this CDC link presents a long (unweighted) list which might. It explicitly quotes multiple comorbidities as a risk factor. Being higher in the range from “overweight” to “severely obese” does progressively increase risk, but there are plenty of others on that list. Not all are related to life-style.

Finally, I could not help noticing how the health of the over-90 cohort “improves” with age. I suppose that is where the “grim reaper” finally out-performs modern medicine.

Last Edited by DavidS at 23 Nov 08:52
White Waltham EGLM, United Kingdom

Austria

data for all austria:

1. diagram

7 day incidences of verified sars-cov2 infections:
non dotted lines (age groups): no vaccination (not completely vaccinated)
dotted lines (age groups) (completely vaccinated).

2. diagram
7 day incidences of symptomatic sars-cov2 infections.
dotted, non dotted same as in diagram 1.

source: official data of the ministry of health and gov.

Last Edited by cpt_om_sky at 23 Nov 09:25
Austria

Below is ONS (Office for National Statistics) data for all England & Wales Covid-19 deaths in Q2 2021.

It lists the 20 most common pre-existing conditions noted on the death certificate where Covid-19 was listed as the primary cause of death. The most common is diabetes, present in almost a quarter of Covid-19 deaths.

The first four are almost entirely lifestyle-related, with an individual’s risk of one, two and four being principally a question of diet, exercise and weight management. Number three is a term comprising asthma, bronchitis and emphysema, the latter two of which are almost entirely related to tobacco smoking.

Number five is amusingly vague – presumably the stuff they were unable to classify (doctors write all sorts on death certificates) – but after that most of them are just part of getting old and are indicative of an elderly population.

1 Diabetes 23.0%
2 Hypertensive diseases 17.0%
3 Chronic lower respiratory diseases 15.3%
4 Ischaemic heart diseases 14.4%
5 Symptoms signs and ill-defined conditions 12.4%
6 Diseases of the urinary system 11.2%
7 Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease 8.9%
8 Heart failure and complications and ill-defined heart disease 8.9%
9 Cardiac arrhythmias 7.9%
10 Cerebrovascular diseases 5.3%
11 Obesity 4.4%
12 Diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue 3.8%
13 Influenza and pneumonia 3.8%
14 Malignant neoplasms of lymphoid haematopoietic and related tissue 3.7%
15 Pulmonary heart disease and diseases of pulmonary circulation 3.1%
16 Accidental falls 2.9%
17 Pulmonary oedema and other intestinal pulmonary diseases 2.9%
18 Fracture of femur 2.5%
19 Cirrhosis and other diseases of liver 2.4%
20 Other medical care 2.3%
21 COVID-19 cases with no pre-existing conditions 18.8%
22 COVID-19 cases with pre-existing (non-top 20) conditions 5.5%

Source is here.

Still think lifestyle makes no difference to your Covid-19 risk?

EGLM & EGTN

The head of AZ has suggested that the reason the UK has high infection data but low hospital data is that the AZ vaccine produces a better T4 response than Pfizer or Moderna. There is no easy way to test that; the hospital data is the most obvious thing.

I could not help noticing how the health of the over-90 cohort “improves” with age. I suppose that is where the “grim reaper” finally out-performs modern medicine.

That’s hilarious

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

DavidS wrote:

Finally, I could not help noticing how the health of the over-90 cohort “improves” with age. I suppose that is where the “grim reaper” finally out-performs modern medicine.

At least for people with 5 or more conditions.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top