Letters, we get letters

In the Friday, March 7 edition of the Estes Park Trail-Gazette, columnist XXXX included a paragraph in the "facts" section of YYYY which is definitely not comprised of facts, but is instead quite misleading.

To make the blanket assertion that "Those with healthy immunities [sic, this isn't a medical or biological term] and strong bodies will not die from the virus" is patently untrue.  There are numerous reports of medical professionals in China and Italy, by definition young and healthy (or they wouldn't be able to survive working in the medical profession) succumbing to COVID-19. 

An individual's risk of dying has to do with underlying health conditions AS WELL AS viral load at the time of infection.  Since no one had any adaptive immunity to the virus responsible for COVID-19 prior to December 2019 (because no one in the human population had encountered it before), everyone, regardless of age, is at risk of infection, and at risk of dying once infected.   

While the risk of death is certainly lower among younger cohorts (2 out of 1000 in China among those ages 10 through 39 --- again, we can argue about whether everyone in this group was without underlying co-morbidity, but I doubt if many 10-year-olds in China are already smoking cigarettes), it is definitely not zero.

More importantly, if you are listening to "very educated and smart" individuals who tell you "99.9% of us have a greater chance of dying by being run over in the Safeway parking lot", either you misheard what they said, or you need to start hanging out with a different group of "very educated and smart" peers. 

Obviously, the risk of a pedestrian dying after being hit by a vehicle is significantly higher than the risk of dying from COVID-19.  Likewise, the risk of dying after being hit by a high-caliber bullet is significantly higher than the risk of dying from COVID-19.  That in no way diminishes the risk of dying from COVID-19, or reduces it to something laughable or insignificant. 

The case-fatality ratio (CFR) for any outbreak can only be accurately determined after the outbreak is over, but preliminary evidence indicates the case-fatality ratio following SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for COVID-19) infection ranges from 0.7% (in countries where there is adequate healthcare) to 5.4% (in countries with healthcare systems overwhelmed by the number of cases). 

For Colorado, let's make a conservative estimate of 1% CFR (it is actually much higher in Washington state, the only place in the United States wtih enough cases currently to make this calculation statistically significant).  This means, on average, 1 in 100 people who become infected will die. 

In a town the size of Estes Park, should the outbreak reach us, and should 25% of our population get infected (which is an incredibly conservative estimate, given that some epidemiologic models and medical experts use numbers as high as 70% for a immunologically naive population, as ours is), this would be around 1600 people.  Of this number, 16 would be predicted to die as a result of infection.  

I don't know the number of fatalities that occurred over the previous year in the Safeway parking lot, but I'm hoping it was a lot lower than 16.