I heard a radio programme that deducted that the risk of a person dying from Covid-19 in the two weeks after they’ve contracted it is more or less equivalent to that same person’s probability of dying across that year. This will differ depending on age and illness.
Yes. I’ve heard this a lot, usually from people who don’t want to abide by lockdown, ‘this virus isn’t a big deal, they were all going to die soon anyway!’.
(Not saying that’s you, btw, just people I know!)
It doesn’t really make sense when you look at the actual medical conditions in the ‘extremely vulnerable’ group though (ie, recipients of successful organ transplants are not expected to die within a year). Nor would we expect healthcare professionals to go from ‘well enough to work full time’ to seriously ill within weeks, sadly, even dead.
Supposedly the overlap will become apparent when the overall death rate for the time period does not rise. Obviously that would be great (not for the families) but we don’t know the true number of deaths yet, due to the mechanical extension of life.
Only when doctors start trying to get these patients off of ventilators after 2 or 3 weeks will we get an indication of the real picture.
The ICNARC report into the first 775 UK critical care patients states that 600 were still in critical care at the time of writing it. Of the resolved cases it was 52/48 % recover or die.
Perhaps right now there is loads of overlap.
We’re still very early days though.