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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

And also the abnormally high ratio of people who die within 1 year of catching Covid from other reasons: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-survivors...

233% increase in chance of death for people less than 65...

183% increase for people 65+: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.77843...

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The article actually says it's 233% increase in chance of death for people younger than 65, which is even scarier:

> For people younger than 65 who were hospitalized with COVID-19, the risk of death in the 12 months after the infection was 233% higher than it was for people who did not have the disease, results published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine have shown.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.77843...

Thanks for the correction!

My mistake - but I would argue it's WAY less scary.

Chance of death is already high when you're 80 (4%). An extra 133% is 5.32% chance of death.

If you're 16 is 0.02%. An extra 133% is a rounding error.

Extra 133%, not extra 33%.

So from 4% to 9.33%, not 5.33%

But if that extra 133% risk is kept throughout your lifetime then back to being scary :/

It's an extra ~1,400 deaths in the 15-18 age group.

This is comparing the risk of death for people who are hospitalized to the risk for their age group, which is missing the major confounding factor that those who are hospitalized for Covid (especially in younger cohorts) are very disproportionately sick (from diabetes, obesity, immune issues from transplants, etc).

There's no evidence that Covid infects diabetics (or other "unhealthy" people) at a higher rate. Hospitalizes them, sure.

The negative group should've had a correct proportion of "unhealthy" people.

Again - even if it is only increasing chance of death in "unhealthy" people... It's still increasing chance of death!

> Hospitalizes them, sure.

Re-read the citation, it's specifically looking at hospitalization.

Why do you keep putting quotes around "unhealthy"? If someone has diabetes they are, by definition, unhealthy.

From the linked article:

"The 12-month risk of mortality was assessed in unadjusted Cox regressions and those adjusted for age, sex, race and comorbidities."

They controlled for comorbidities.

Specifically, they use the Charlson Comorbidity Index:

https://www.mdcalc.com/charlson-comorbidity-index-cci

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3818341/ - a peer-reviewed proof demonstrating how comorbidity indices are effective

The researchers found a strong positive correlation between severe COVID-19 (defined as a COVID-19 hospitalization) and chance of death for any reason.

There're obvious reasons why people of all ages with preexisting health issues are likely to get severe COVID-19 as opposed to asymptomatic, mild or moderate one, and the same people are also more likely to die from other health-related reasons. This would explain the correlation they found.

However, in the "Discussion" section they wrote this:

Based on the evidence that contracting severe COVID-19 infection increases the risk of death after surviving the episode, it is clear that prevention of significant COVID-19 infection is the most effective way to decrease the risk of death following COVID-19

Does anyone understands why exactly is it clear?

Note the graph in the same article shows people with mild COVID-19 have lower risk of death compared to people with no COVID at all.

If you get hospitalized from covid, you're already a sickly person, so this isn't surprising. More of a correlation than a cause.

Correlation is not causation. Can you think of any confounding factors here?

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