Yes people who are old or sick are more likely to die. However, young, healthy people are needing to be hospitalized for this about 15-20% of the time. Tony Boselli got admitted to the ICU for coronavirus and aside from orthopedic issues, I suspect he's pretty healthy. There was a baby in Illinois and an 18 year old in LA who died of this. But these are outliers. Again, Corona parties are a bad idea when it gives you a 15-20% chance to end up in the hospital.
We don't really know why some otherwise healthy people are ending up on vents.
We’ve counted the viral spread across peoples; now we need to count it within people.
www.newyorker.com
Well let me revise this. I just read a very good article sent by a colleague. It seems the dose of the virus you get at the outset can have a big effect on how sick you get. For instance, doctors are getting sicker than hell because when they intubate pts the pt aerosolizes the virus right in the doctor's face. This can give you a near lethal dose of the virus right in your lungs if you aren't wearing appropriate gear.
I think similarly, if you are on a crowded subway car with the dumbass next to you coughing up a lung right on your shoulder you might be in serious trouble. However, if you maybe touch a dirty doorknob and then pick your nose you might get a small dose in your nose and end up with mild symptoms. This is all about minute particles moving through your relatively massive body and how many particles are able to find purchase, are able to replicate and where. Incredibly difficult stuff to predict for any one encounter but you can make some general predictions about the kinds of interactions that would be problematic.
Again, this is a theory but I subscribe to it.
The other thing is that your innate immune system is more important than your acquired immune system (B and T cells) with this disease. Young people have better innate immune systems but weaker acquired immune systems (at least theoretically) since they haven't seen as many pathogens. Since it's a new bug, we're all naive. People with lung disease, people with diabetes, immunocompromised people, older people are all gonna fair worse. But we knew that.
Now if all this seems a little heady, here's one pearl for those of you guys who made it this far:
NYC's Department of Health is poo-pooing rim jobs.
nypost.com