In Part I of this series, we saw why the death rate (or Case Fatality Rate, CFR) should not be the only metric we use for gauging Covid risk. To form a comprehensive understanding of the risks that Covid poses to us all, there are other factors that we need to consider. 1 in 3 young adults face risk of severe cases of Covid that will not be deadly, and anecdotal observations that have been recounted to me personally line up pretty closely with the data (see Part I).
The risk of being hospitalized, and risks related to hospitalization, seems like a good place to start. The following infographic is a visual guide to that risk. If you are hospitalized, it shows you your chances of dying are, based on your age.
It assumes a random group of 400 people who have contracted Covid (represented by yellow people). The first page shows you the chances that you end up in that group, based on your age. It then visually depicts the chances of someone from that infected group ending up hospitalized (represented by orange people), based on existing data as of July 11. It also shows the chances of that person dying if they are hospitalized (represented by red people). At the very end, you’ll see a comparison with Case Fatality Rate, or CFR, the stat that most of the country is predominantly fixated on.
Hospitalizations are as of July 11 (most recent COVID-NET figure) and the total case and fatality count as of July 17. The figures have already changes by now, July 22, half a million new cases in five days.
A few interesting observations from this data:
- Young people are more likely to contract Covid than old people, except for people over the age of 85. This makes sense, since we know that early outbreaks ravaged nursing homes around the country, and that in the last month or so many young adults returned to normal routines and went out more. Note that “Confirmed Covid-19 cases, % of the population. By age” is calculated as [total confirmed cases in an age group] / [US population of that age group]. That means that as confirmed cases go up, these numbers will continue to increase. They cannot go down.
- If you’re between the ages of 30-39 and catch Covid, your chances of needing to be hospitalized are approximately 1 in 20. The chances of serious and long-term effects from Covid increase if you are hospitalized.
- If you’re between the ages of 30-39 and are hospitalized for Covid, your risk of dying is also approximately 1 in 20, if you’re between the ages of 30-39. This rate nearly doubles, to 1 in 10, if you’re between the ages of 40-49.
- Adults under 50 are at lowest risk of dying from Covid. Still, for 40-49 year olds, the CFR is 0.3%, which is 3x higher than that of influenza.
Part III of this series will compare the risk of hospitalization and death for both the flu and Covid-19. Stay tuned.
We’re relatively new to producing infographics and would love some feedback. Let us know what you think! You can reach both Erik and I at [email protected], or find us in the ReConsider Facebook Group.
Data and source details
Number of confirmed cases and deaths are taken from the CDC as of July 17, 2020. Hospitalization rates are from the CDC’s COVID-NET monitoring network (not to be confused with, confusingly, Covid-Net, which is an imaging tool for detecting the presence of Covid in people’s lungs). The COVID-NET network is comprised of acute care hospitals in 14 states, which together account for approximately 10% of the US population.
On the one hand, COVID-NET is a fairly large sample size of the US population, so we can reasonably draw some generalizations the hospitalization rates that it reports. However, since each state (and often, each municipality) has so uniquely handled its Covid response in the last three months, hospitalization rates may vary more significantly in the states that are not part of the COVID-NET group of reporting hospitals.
My analysis used the hospitalization rates from COVID-NET to calculate implied nation-wide hospitalization rates based on confirmed Covid-19 cases. If hospitalization rates vary wildly in states that are not part of COVID-NET, these estimates could be off. But it’s the best source that I’ve found so far for hospitalization rate (please hit me up at [email protected] if you know something I don’t here), and figured that the sample size was large enough that we can figure we’re at least probably in the right ballpark.
** For deaths as a % of hospitalizations, I’m making the assumption that most of the confirmed deaths were confirmed because they happened at hospitals. Clearly, this isn’t true in all cases. For 85+ year olds, 124% implies more deaths than hospitalizations, which wouldn’t make sense unless a lot of deaths were happening outside of hospitals. Without having investigated this in great detail, there is a logic to this number. 85+ year olds in nursing homes may decide that they don’t wish to go through the trauma of hospitalization at that point, and would rather pass in their room than in the ER. At that point, the nursing home would confirm their death, leading to a confirmed case outside of the hospital.
Sources:
COVID-NET: COVID-19-Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. WEBSITE. Accessed on July 17, 2020.
Cases and deaths in the US can be found on the CDC’s website. As of the evening of 7/20/2020, total US case count has already increased by over 200,000 since July 17th, when the data for this infographic was collected.
Check out ReConsider’s most recent podcast episode on the national security law in Hong Kong, where we dive into the hundred year old feud between China and the West that ultimately brought us to this point. We also went all out on the show notes for this one – lots of references and a ton of detail. Check them out here.
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