It seems that anecdotal evidence of young people dying of COVID-19 is the trend of the moment. Not sure if it's just cheap clickbait or the goal is to make younger generations to actually care about social distancing.<p>The deal is that we are dealing with the power of large numbers. You can cherry-pick whatever case you want to fit your narrative. It does not mean its relevant information.
Some quick googling also shows that young people without pre-existing conditions can die from the regular flu.<p><a href="https://time.com/5099042/influenza-deaths-flu/" rel="nofollow">https://time.com/5099042/influenza-deaths-flu/</a>
Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the WHO's Director General, in [1]:<p>One of the things that terrifies me now is, as this is spread in the west is, there’s this sense of invulnerability among millennials. And absolutely not. Ten percent of the people who are in [intensive care units] in Italy are in their 20s, 30s or 40s. These are young, healthy people with no co-morbidities, no other diseases.
We don’t understand why some young healthy people progress to severe disease and even die and others don’t. We don’t have clear predictors.<p>[1] <a href="https://time.com/5805368/will-coronavirus-go-away-world-health-organization/" rel="nofollow">https://time.com/5805368/will-coronavirus-go-away-world-heal...</a>
It's easy to find an article like this very frightening, if you're young and healthy and have been thinking there's thus no chance you'll die of COVID-19 if (more likely when, tbh) you get it. I already have it, so I totally understand that.<p>But this is the first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease, and we're over a hundred thousand confirmed cases in. Even assuming the current understanding is accurate, and this person didn't have some undiagnosed comorbidity, that's on the order of a .001% chance of dying.<p>For a pandemic disease, those are very good odds.<p>Yes, it's frightening, and in frightening times. But it's important to keep a sense of perspective. After all, stressing out over this can only weaken your defenses.
Biased as an immunologist, but this sounds like HLA type differences. The cells chop the virus proteins and stick them out using MHC1 to notify the immune system. This response is partly determined by genetics (HLA TYPE) and if we cluster outcomes vs HLA types we could learn a model to predict who’s gonna have worse outcomes. Could help with triage if it were a decision tree model
I'm puzzled by the intense focus on whether someone who dies had a pre-existing condition. It's like people want to convict the person for their own death, make it look like they were irresponsible, as a denial mechanism.<p>By blaming the person for succumbing to the virus they can fall in to the US-centric mindset of blaming people for their own disfortune, poverty, illness, accident, lack of whiteness, etc.<p>It's really stupid, unless you are a physician treating cases, to focus this way. It keeps us from dealing with the reality of the pandemic.<p>Edit: for those objecting to my observation, see the responses linked below, which were the only ones present when I replied. I've seen this pattern often enough over the last few days to realize that it's not simply people seeking information about the nature of the disease, it is something else, more reactionary and emotional.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684440" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684440</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684570" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684570</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684817" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22684817</a>
This type of Virus can cause respiratory failure by infecting the central nervous system even without infecting the lungs significantly. Latest interesting theory I’ve seen is that cases like this young woman (if truly otherwise healthy) could be because of this CNS disruption.<p><a href="https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/15/7264" rel="nofollow">https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/15/7264</a>
Without a proper PM it’s hard to know, when a 20 something footballer died in Italy it was initially without pre-existing conditions then some results came back and they found he had a undiagnosed leukemia.<p>However even without pre-existing conditions there is still a non-zero chance of complications that could result in a fatality regardless of how low the chances are.<p>This both means that people shouldn’t be careless but it also doesn’t mean that the news should abuse this to spread irrational fear.<p>Comments like this:<p>>
"Clinicians who care for adults should be aware that COVID-19 can result in severe disease among persons of all ages," said the report, published on 18 March.<p>Serve little to no clinical value, clinicians understand very well that there is always a chance; however it is quite clear that currently the likelihood of younger patients to die is still extremely slim compared to the current high risk groups which includes pretty much anyone over 60.<p>The number of deaths in the 18-24 group specifically is still a rounding error.
There was a 18-year-old died in L.A. appeared to be youngest death due to COVID-19 in the U.S. so far.<p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/los-angeles-health-officials-say-a-child-under-18-has-died-from-the-coronavirus.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/los-angeles-health-officials...</a>
Smoking? Vaping? From what I've heard about other cases its highly unlikely but not impossible to die from Covid-19 if otherwise young and healthy...
This is a very rare (in terms of percent) outlier for now. But as the first big wave comes and health care systems are overloaded this will become normal. Even as young people's lives are saved by triaging and letting old people die. Hospitalization is required in almost 30% of cases of 20-54 year olds and 5% of that is critical.<p>If it takes abusing the properties of huge numbers to get younger people to wake up then do it. Because pretty soon this isn't going to be rare.
It seems the Spanish flu first targeted old people, and almost disappeared during summer, before returning during fall and targeting young people. I hope it won't be like that this time.
I hope these kinds of articles go viral. I know too many people about that age that aren't isolating and distancing. I don't care that it's sensational if it saves some lives