Since the beginning of the Wuhan Pandemic, the big question has been: just how bad is it? From the very first, answers became rapidly polarised between absolute conviction that it was a death sentence on par with the Spanish Flu or the Black Death, and handwaving dismissal as “just like the flu”. Not coincidentally, which end of the spectrum one leaned towards was and is notably correlated with political leaning.
Understandably, in the early days of the pandemic, there was much uncertainty. Even so, estimates of its deadliness, expressed as Infection Fatality Rate (the risk of death for each infection), leaned heavily to the high end, leading to computer modelled estimates of deaths that were, in hindsight, grossly exaggerated. (Yet again.)
With three years of data in the bank, then, what is the IFR of Covid? Is the Wuhan Plague exceptionally deadly, “no worse than the flu”, or something else? A new study has crunched the numbers, particularly using data gathered before mass vaccination, in order to determine the deadliness of Covid “in the wild”, as it were. Data was also treated to “sensitivity analysis”, to try and avoid under- or over-counting.
The first thing it notes — and this has been known since the earliest days — is that Covid disproportionately targets the very, very old and very, very sick.
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had grave worldwide consequences. Among people dying from COVID-19, the largest burden is carried by the elderly (Ioannidis et al., 2020), and persons living in nursing homes are particularly vulnerable (Comas-Herrera et al., 2020).
Yet, entire societies were locked down under virtual house arrest. Children were particularly targeted, with schools and playgrounds closed. These panicked, heavy-handed policies ignored one glaring fact:
Non-elderly people represent the vast majority of the global population, with 94% of the global population being younger than 70 years old, 91% being younger than 65 years old, and 86% being younger than 60 years old.
(Emphasis added)
Responding to a pandemic is unavoidably a matter of trying to target limited resources where most needed. What, for instance, is the point of rolling out scarce vaccines to children, if they are unlikely to be affected by the virus? Why lock down young, healthy adults, with the associated crippling social, medical and economic fallout, if they, too are unlikely to be affected? If a very small percentage of the population is likely to be affected, shouldn’t medical resources and money be directed overwhelmingly to them?
With all that in mind, what does the new study tell us about the IFR of Covid on different age groups?
The median IFR was 0.0003% at 0–19 years, 0.002% at 20–29 years, 0.011% at 30–39 years, 0.035% at 40–49 years, 0.123% at 50–59 years, and 0.506% at 60–69 years. IFR increases approximately 4 times every 10 years. Including data from another 9 countries with imputed age distribution of COVID-19 deaths yielded median IFR of 0.025–0.032% for 0–59 years and 0.063–0.082% for 0–69 years. Meta-regression analyses also suggested global IFR of 0.03% and 0.07%, respectively in these age groups
Science Direct
This was, it must again be emphasised, before widespread Covid vaccination.
Compare that with the IFR for seasonal influenza in a typical outbreak: <0.1% to 0.5% (if untreated).
So, Covid is not “just like” the flu: for the vast majority of the population it’s much, much milder. For children and young adults, it’s vanishingly non-threatening.
For this, countries around the world were subjected to a brutal and unprecedented regime of governmental and bureaucratic authoritarianism.
As Johnny Rotten once said, Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
