
The last resting places of John and Priscilla Alden in the Miles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury, the oldest maintained cemetery in the country/Wikimedia Commons
Has the time come to accept Covid-19 for what it has truly become, the newest of the inevitable life-ending diseases that we all must one day face?
Covid-19 might kill anyone who gets infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus, the reality is that it mainly kills the old.
Of the 1.1 million Americans reported to have died of Covid-19 since the pandemic began in early 2020, KFF reported 790,000 – or more than 70 percent – were age 65 or older.
And as the deadliness of the virus has declined and treatments against the disease have improved over time, the proportion of old people dying has only increased.
Sixty-five is the original age of retirement for Social Security purposes. It was based on how long people were expected to live 90 years ago.
“If we look at life expectancy statistics from the 1930s, we might come to the conclusion that the Social Security program was designed in such a way that people would work for many years paying in taxes, but would not live long enough to collect benefits,” a history of the act written by the Social Security Administration concedes.
“Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was indeed only 58 for men and 62 for women, and the retirement age was 65. But life expectancy at birth in the early decades of the 20th century was low due mainly to high infant mortality, and someone who died as a child would never have worked and paid into Social Security. A more appropriate measure is probably life expectancy after attainment of adulthood.”
Those who made it to 65 were, at the time, looking at an average survival time of approximately 13 more years for men and 15 more years for women. But the pool of those who made it to that retirement age was a lot smaller than it is today.
The death rate in motor vehicle accidents in the 1930s was about 30 per 100,000 – almost double the current rate. And the cancer rate was about 100 per 100,000 – about 70 percent of what it is today.
Big changes
Whatever the case, before the SARS-CoV-2 virus arrived on the scene and Covid-19 started killing people, modern Americans were living a lot longer than their ancestors even if many of them were pumped full of drugs designed to control chronic diseases.
More than 46 percent of men and almost 40 percent of the women who made it to age 21 in 1935 failed to survive to age 65, according to Social Security data. These numbers shifted dramatically over time, especially for women.
By 1990, 83.6 percent of women who lived to age 21 were surviving to age 65, or to put it another way, the death rate between the ages of 21 and 65 had been more than halved.
Men weren’t doing quite as well. Almost 28 percent of them were still failing to make it from age 21 to age 65, but that still marked a 61 percent improvement.
The U.S. population at the time was only 127 million. Fifty million people would have equaled nearly 40 percent of the population.
Luckily, the population boomed and the U.S. now numbers almost 330 million, meaning only 15 percent of the population is collecting Social Security retirement.
Still, that has been enough to create huge problems for a program never expected to carry such a load. By 2019, the New York Times was reporting “the cost of Social Security, the federal retirement program, will exceed its income in 2020 for the first time since 1982. The program’s reserve fund is projected to be depleted in 16 years, at which time recipients will get smaller payments than they are scheduled to receive if Congress does not act.”
Then along came the pandemic.
Social Security is still spending more money than it takes in, but its annual report this year noted the deficit is now coming down instead of going up.
Due to ” a stronger-than-expected recovery from the recession, higher expected levels of labor productivity, and lower anticipated long-range disability incidence rates,” the Trustees reported, Social Security is today operating with a smaller deficit.
The weak and the old
The long-range disability costs have gone down because a lot of people with what were once called “chronic diseases,” now commonly lumped into the category of “co-morbidities” were killed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
“More typical is a patient with type 2 diabetes who is depressed and obese and has coronary heart disease and osteoarthritis.”
The pandemic has been cruel to such patients. The latest report from the Centers for Disease Control indicates almost 95 percent of those reported dead from Covid-19 were suffering from some other disease as well, and “for deaths with conditions or causes in addition to Covid-19, on average, there were four additional conditions or causes per death.”
Like the rest of the animals on the planet, homo sapiens remained largely tied to the fundamental law of nature that dictates death is most likely to come to the young, the weak and the old.
Our species has done a superb job of altering the equation for the young and made some progress in prolonging the lives of the old while actually increasing the population of the weak.
Many of the Covid-deadly co-morbidities of today are linked to immunosenescence, which is, in turn, linked to lack of fitness and age.
“What is seldom considered when examining the immune response of an aged individual is that the immune system is profoundly influenced by physical activity. Habitual physical activity levels decline with age with significant consequences for muscle mass and function. Skeletal muscle is a major immune regulatory organ and generates a range of proteins, termed myokines, which have anti-inflammatory and immunoprotective effects.
“Several studies indicate that maintaining physical activity has immune benefits in older adults, for example, it reduces the systemic inflammation associated with chronic age-related diseases.”
It has been shown especially effective against Covid-19. A British study of walkers early in the pandemic found that fast walkers – fast-walking being a basic measure of cardiovascular fitness – found slow walkers had a near quadruple change of death from Covid-19.
Since then, a variety of studies have reached similar conclusions, although the estimates of protection have varied.
The latest, a meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine late last month, concluded regular exercise could lower the risk of Covid-19 death by 43 percent and the risk of severe illness by 44 percent.
That’s not as good as the protection offered by vaccines, although it is close to the real-world performance of vaccines in the face of Omicron, the latest SARS-CoV-2 variant. And it is in some ways it is better than the vaccines.
The benefits of exercise don’t fade as vaccines do. Exercise has been shown to be protective against every Covid variant to date. And not only that, exercise protects against a long list of other diseases.
But many Americans, for better or worse, are now conditioned to believe health is largely about the drugs and procedures sold by the medical industry, and fitness is secondary.
Categories: Commentary, News
Good lord
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11323677/Outrage-Boston-University-CREATES-Covid-strain-80-kill-rate.html
Scientists; sometimes they just can’t help themselves. Curiosity trumps reason.
It was designed by the Chinese and paid for by the American’s to kill off China’s 270 million (over 70) aging population. They do not have the resources from their “one child” policy to sustain their economy and that many old people. Being that you give to the communist party and never take, the “dependers” must go. Thus, Covid-19 is born. The architect of ObamaCare said what? “Life wasn’t worth living after 75”? Got it? Good!
A. It’s a stretch to call Zeke Emanuel “the architect” of ObamaCare even if a label-crazy media has occasionally done so. That said, he was a big supporter. And he’s had some idiotic views on freedom of speech: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/05/opinions/trump-facebook-medical-misinformation-emanuel/index.html
B. Still, you misquoted his views on age 75 and beyond.
What he wrote was this:
“…I am not talking about bargaining with God to live to 75 because I have a terminal illness. Nor am I talking about waking up one morning 18 years from now and ending my life through euthanasia or suicide. Since the 1990s, I have actively opposed legalizing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. People who want to die in one of these ways tend to suffer not from unremitting pain but from depression, hopelessness, and fear of losing their dignity and control. The people they leave behind inevitably feel they have somehow failed. The answer to these symptoms is not ending a life but getting help. I have long argued that we should focus on giving all terminally ill people a good, compassionate death—not euthanasia or assisted suicide for a tiny minority.
“I am talking about how long I want to live and the kind and amount of health care I will consent to after 75. Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible. This has become so pervasive that it now defines a cultural type: what I call the American immortal.”
You can read the whole thing here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/
Basically, his argument was that “he” didn’t want to live a long time as an “old man.” He has never said anything about anyone else.
Lastly, there is no evidence China was trying to kill off it’s old folk, and the onerous stay-at-home orders it imposed in an effort to minimize deaths would argue against that idea. But there is no doubt the country has a motive to do as you suggest.
The one-child policy led to a massive and long-term demographic shift. By 2050, a full third of the population is expected to over age 60, an age at which worker productivity begins to decline and health care costs begin to increase. Nature magazine has warned of “fiscal problem for the government.” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02304-8#:~:text=Currently%2C%20more%20than%2018%25%20of,fiscal%20problem%20for%20the%20government.
That might be an understatement. But China isn’t alone in this predicament, according to the OECD:
“Although life expectancy gains in old age have slowed since 2010, the pace of ageing is projected to be fast over the next two decades. The size of the working-age population is projected to fall by more than one‑quarter by 2060 in most Southern, Central and Eastern European countries as well as in Japan and Korea.” https://www.oecd.org/pensions/pensions-protected-during-covid-19-pandemic-but-ageing-challenges-persist.htm
Craig,
I am not going to post links as I believe I can only post one.
A quote from Wiki, whatever that is worth.
“Ezekiel Jonathan “Zeke” Emanuel (born September 6, 1957) is an American oncologist, bioethicist … Although Emanuel opposes legalized euthanasia, he believes that after age 75 life is not worth living, and the pursuit of longevity, not a worthwhile goal for U.S. health care policy.”
As for China, please Google go back to 2010 and look up “China aging population and it’s affects on it’s economy”. They are Communists and when 270 million elderly dependents drain their economy they kill them. OK, maybe there is not “proof”, but who needs it, they don’t play by the rules and do what is required to be the military economic super power of the world. Covid was lab created and released. There are no “accidents” there.
The motive is clear. Without a doubt.. The Chinese do not operated within the same boundaries we do.
As for their lockdowns, they killed more than they saved.
Their one child policy was misguided and will contribute to a collapsing economy.
“Has the time come to accept Covid-19 for what it has truly become, the newest of the inevitable life-ending diseases that we all must one day face?”
Was it truly inevitable, or was it manufactured?