Younger adults are large percentage of coronavirus hospitalizations in United States, according to new CDC data (1 Viewer)

[Ahsoka]

The deadly coronavirus has been met with a bit of a shrug among some in the under-50 set in the United States. Even as public health officials repeatedly urged social distancing, the young and hip spilled out of bars on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. They gleefully hopped on flights, tweeting about the rock-bottom airfares. And they gathered in packs on beaches.
Their attitudes were based in part on early data from China, which suggested covid-19 might seriously sicken or kill the elderly — but spare the young.
Stark new data from the United States and Europe suggests otherwise.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of U.S. cases from Feb. 12 to March 16 released Wednesday shows 38 percent of those sick enough to be hospitalized were younger than 55.

Earlier this week, French health ministry official Jérome Salomon said half of the 300 to 400 coronavirus patients treated in intensive care units in Paris were younger than 65, and, according to numbers presented at a seminar of intensive care specialists, half the ICU patients in the Netherlands were younger than 50.

At a White House news conference on Wednesday, Deborah Birx, the response coordinator of the nation’s coronavirus task force, warned about the concerning reports from France — and Italy, too — about “young people getting seriously ill and very seriously ill in the ICUs.”

She called out younger generations in particular, for not taking the virus seriously, and warned of “disproportional number of infections among that group.”

Coronavirus looks different in kids than in adults
President Trump reinforced her warning, saying: “We don’t want them gathering, and I see they do gather, including on beaches and in restaurants, young people. They don’t realize, and they’re feeling invincible.”
The CDC report looked at 4,226 covid-19 cases, with much of the data coming from the outbreaks among older adults in assisted living facilities. As in China, the highest percentage of severe outcomes were among the elderly. About 80 percent of people who died were older than 65.

Severe outcomes among patients with covid-19.

There was more encouraging news about children in the United States. Those age 19 and younger who were tested appear to have milder illness with almost no hospitalizations. A much larger sample of children in China, as detailed in the journal Pediatrics this week, found that most children had mild to moderate illness.

The CDC report did not specify whether the younger patients had underlying conditions that might make them more vulnerable, but Anthony S. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, commented on CNN on Wednesday night that some did.
One younger adult, Clement Chow, a genetics researcher at the University of Utah, has been tweeting about his experiences. “Important point: we really don’t know much about his virus. I’m young and not high risk, yet I am in the ICU with a very severe case,” he wrote. He said he was facing respiratory failure and put on oxygen.

Public health experts say it’s difficult to compare coronavirus numbers by age across countries at this stage because of the limited numbers tested and because differences may be related to the environment, lifestyle, demographics or something about the virus itself.

There may be a high percentages of young smokers in some areas of France, for example. Or “the high proportion of critically ill young people in the Netherlands may reflect the relatively younger population,” the Dutch news service NRC surmised.
Maybe some young people who were tested happen to be in cities or industrial areas with a lot of pollution that may affect their susceptibility to serious respiratory illness. Or the bar for admission to the hospital and the quality of treatment may vary enough by country that it affects the course of the illness.
Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, the director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, said the numbers are difficult to interpret because so few people have been tested. He said some populations may be overrepresented because of public health officials focusing on testing clusters of people who live together and may be of similar ages.

However, Garcia-Sastre said, the numbers show it’s clear “everybody has risk. Even in young people, there is a percentage that has serious infection."

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Largest study to date suggests infants may be vulnerable to critical illness after all — and that children may play a ‘major role’ in spread of pathogen

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/19/younger-adults-are-large-percentage-coronavirus-hospitalizations-united-states-according-new-cdc-data/?outputType=amp

The most important point here is that we shouldn't forget that this is a novel disease. While it may be tempting to say that we know that x group is at risk or y will happen so it's okay, at the end of the day we don't have enough research done to be able to know for sure what's safe and what's not. Stay safe everyone and be careful, no matter what your demographic is.

 

[Foxia]

I live in The Netherlands and there haven't been many cases of really young people YET. It angers me that people my age (and to the max of .. lets say 50) don't think it will happen to them because of their age. All kind of shit can happen to you even if you're of a young age! And even if it might not effect you a lot, at least we can think about not spreading it to other people who are or might be at risk. Hopefully my government will take more drastic decisions because a lot of people are just taking vacation trips right now while I'm at home not seeing anyone just in case.

 

[Abeamus]

The coronavirus is very much and will be for a while an ongoing thing and the amount of studies that have been done on it now is nothing compared to the many years of studies on other diseases like the flu.

There's a lot of information that has been coming out like patients who were hospitalised having lung damage that could take 15 years to recover so there is potential that the more you get it the better its chances are of killing you.

Ultimately people need to realise that this is real and if you're careless then you or a family member could become a part of the statistics and even if you aren't it could end up doing damage that cuts years off of your life.

As someone who also may have had it, it kicked my ass and I did nothing but lay in bed for 2 days and feeling absolutely terrible without being hospitalised so imagine how bad it can really get.

 

[Ahsoka]

The coronavirus is very much and will be for a while an ongoing thing and the amount of studies that have been done on it now is nothing compared to the many years of studies on other diseases like the flu.

There's a lot of information that has been coming out like patients who were hospitalised having lung damage that could take 15 years to recover so there is potential that the more you get it the better its chances are of killing you.

Ultimately people need to realise that this is real and if you're careless then you or a family member could become a part of the statistics and even if you aren't it could end up doing damage that cuts years off of your life.

As someone who also may have had it, it kicked my ass and I did nothing but lay in bed for 2 days and feeling absolutely terrible without being hospitalised so imagine how bad it can really get.

I'm glad you feel better now, that sounds horrible.

 

[DrowningFishy]

California declared a lock down and thinks social pressure is enough to keep people in doors. Let me tell you-it's not going to work. Look what is happening in France people don't give a hoot and are openly denyign orders. Same is going to happen here. ANd with the high homeless population, and a mistrusting illegal population California has plenty of fuel to add the flames.

I've decided all I can do is de-stress and watch CA burn

@Kiseki this indeed will be an ongoing yearly thing. The race is now to find a cure/vaccine before a body count really starts stacking up. Unlike the flu once you get COVID-19 there is zero protection for going for a round 2. In matter of fact they found a lot of people have been re-infected. Glad your feeling better but don't let yourself get a false sense of security

 

[jasque]

Even if it werent the case, these people have family

They should at least be scaried of putting them at risk