The COVID Strategy America Hasn’t Really Tried
It is common knowledge that COVID risk goes up with age, but how steeply it rises is still astounding to see after two years of living and dying with this coronavirus. Compared with someone in their 20s, a person over 65 years old is not slightly more likely to die of COVID but at least 65 times more likely to die of COVID. Over age 75, they become 140 times more likely to die. Over age 85, they are 340 times more likely to die.
No other basic fact of life matters as dramatically as age for COVID. Other common factors associated with risk—race, diabetes, cancer, immunosuppression—make the disease deadlier by a factor of “only” two to four. These are significant differences that influence how doctors care for COVID. But age increases risk by entire orders of magnitude. It is simply in a league of its own.
This is why, even though America’s vaccination and booster rates look better in the older groups compared with the young, they are still too low. As a result, deaths in the United States are still, which are the latest available. Age continues to be the driver of COVID’s brutal math with Omicron, though: In 2022 so far, three-quarters of have been in people 65 and older, 93 percent in people 50 and older.
