Sivad wrote:
As of March 30, 2020, the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Italy has hit mostly people over 50 years of age. In fact, as the chart shows, about 74 percent of individuals infected with the virus was over 50 years old. Only one in four individuals who contracted the virus were between 19 and 50 years old.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/110 ... oup-italy/
Old and young
The vast majority of cases in China — 87% — were in people ages 30 to 79, the China Center for Disease Control reported last month based on data from all 72,314 of those diagnosed with Covid-19 as of Feb. 11. That probably reflects something about biology more than lifestyle, such as being in frequent contact with other people. Teens and people in their 20s also encounter many others, at school and work and on public transit, yet they don’t seem to be contracting the disease at significant rates: Only 8.1% of cases were 20-somethings, 1.2% were teens, and 0.9% were 9 or younger. The World Health Organization mission to China found that 78% of the cases reported as of Feb. 20 were in people ages 30 to 69.
[...]
Youth, in contrast, seems to be protective. The WHO mission reported a relatively low incidence in people under 18, who made up only 2.4% of all reported cases. In fact, through mid-January, zero children in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, had contracted Covid-19. It’s not clear whether that’s because children do not show signs of illness even if infected.
Even cases among children and teens aged 10 to 19 are rare. As of Feb. 11 there were 549 cases in that age group, 1.2% of the total, China CDC found. Only one had died.
One intriguing explanation for the apparent resilience of youth: in regions near Hubei province, young children seem especially likely to be exposed to other coronaviruses, scientists in China reported in 2018. That might have given them at least partial immunity to this one.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/03/who ... c-factors/
Remarkable Age Distribution of OC43 vs. SARS-CoV-2 in China
In their preliminary analysis of the clinical parameters of COVID-19, from the first 425 patients, Li et al noted that there were no pediatric cases, and that the median age was 59 years old. While there are sure to be pediatric cases now that the total number of confirmed cases has topped 70,000, the impression has been that the pediatric age group has been very much spared a major impact from SARS-CoV-2.
Li et al surmised that perhaps the pediatric age group had some inherent resistance to SARS-CoV-2 infection via the non-specific immune response. While there is precedent for such clinical resistance in other viral infections, such as Hepatitis A and Epstein Barr virus, another explanation may lie in the annual exposure of this age group to other coronaviruses causing upper respiratory disease.
http://virological.org/t/remarkable-age ... -china/399
Lol!!
Your evidence is "surmised that perhaps".
Here is your problem,
You and I both beleive the number of cases reported are the tip of the iceberg. Yet you accept summation and assumption based on statistical analysis of just cases identified.
Statista is clearly only identified cases and just like the point that it over represents deaths, it also under represents children because they are less likely to get ill. Please stop falling into this trap, unless the people tested represent a genuine subset of society, rather than those who are ill and most likely to fall ill then they do not tell us anything other than the point that the older you are, the more likely you are to appear in the figures because you became ill
Your second opinion piece based on the same research using reported cases. Yes there are very few children falling ill and so they are spared becoming patients, but surmising based on this is not evidence. It is a call for more research, which does not appear in the article.
Do you have a link to the research that supports this assumption?
"That probably reflects something about biology more than lifestyle, such as being in frequent contact with other people."
Or the research that tests the theory that children have immunity to covid-19 due to prior viruses?
Until there is tests showing children previously exposed to the common cold provided immunity in Italy and Wuhan then I will remain skeptical.
Neither of these are in the article written by a reporter who has since changed her tune in the month since the article was written.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/18/cor ... nvincible/"In an alarming development, however, scientists in China are now reporting that the new coronavirus does not spare the very young. In the first retrospective study of Covid-19 among children in the country where the pandemic began, they count 2,143 cases in children. Of those, they report in the journal Pediatrics, more than 90% were mild or moderate, confirming earlier observations that children are at lower risk of severe disease. (That may be because the molecule that allows the virus to enter human cells seems to be less developed in children.)"
The third article is most worrying as it quotes Li who was providing analysis of the first 425 patients when the test was available
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316He did not know at that time why children were not part of those 425 patients and his analysis was there could be two reasons for it.
Firstly these 425 are:
"our case definition specified severe enough illness to require medical attention,"
As we now know children with the virus rarely show symptoms requiring medical attention.
And the two possible reasons given
"children might be less likely to become infected or, if infected, may show milder symptoms, and either of these situations would account for underrepresentation "
Which makes the use of Li's work in January to support this argument invalid as he is arguing neither for or against.
I'm sure you've spent plenty of time trawling the internet to support your belief, but so far you appear to be repeating the same mistake again and again. Confirmation bias is a dangerous thing.
So when fieldwork is showing no difference, both in a Chinese study of patients contacts and an Italian town where the whole population was tested, then I will believe these studies over statistical analysis of patients.