If you have read my blog on "life years", then I won't reexplain it here. What I will try to point out is that we need to look at the coronavirus in a totally different way using "life Years".
I am going t keep this simple so that more people can understand the concept of life years. One way we determine how significant the coronavirus is, is to compare it with other way that people die. You can't just say that any death for any reason is a crisis. It has to be done by some kind of comparison to other reasons that people die. With me on that?
To make my point, I am going to keep this short and just use a few comparisons. I could make a list including 99% of the reason people die, but just a couple will make my point. Here are the numbers:
(1) Deaths from auto accidents----------------125,000
(2) Deaths from drug over doses--------------245,000
(3) Deaths from coronavirus------------------- 70,000
I should have used some data where deaths were less than the coronavirus, but this will do. Next, look at the average age of the people who died in each group above:
(1) 31 years
(2) 28 years
(3) 61 years
I need to add on other piece of data and that is life expectancy of each of these groups given the ages:
(1) 84 years
(2) 85 years
(3) 87 years
If these numbers look off, it is because these are conditional probability numbers. As you know, the normal life expectancy numbers are based on people at age "1" and these people are older.
Here is the punch line in "life years" lost due to death.
(1) 84 - 31 X 125,000 = 6,625,000
(2) 85 - 28 X 245,000 = 13,965,000
(3) 87 - 61 X 70,000 = 1,560,000
Notice that the impact of the coronavirus is clearly much less in life years than the other two forms of death. What we need to do is to totally revise how we look at the data related to the cause of deaths and life years is the parameter that we all should be using. With the normal data and analysis, auto deaths are 2 times that of the coronavirus, but if you look at it terms of life years, it is 4.2 times. That is a big difference and I think I used a conservative number for the coronavirus of 61 average years of age. Had I use a higher number, the difference would have been even greater.
I am going t keep this simple so that more people can understand the concept of life years. One way we determine how significant the coronavirus is, is to compare it with other way that people die. You can't just say that any death for any reason is a crisis. It has to be done by some kind of comparison to other reasons that people die. With me on that?
To make my point, I am going to keep this short and just use a few comparisons. I could make a list including 99% of the reason people die, but just a couple will make my point. Here are the numbers:
(1) Deaths from auto accidents----------------125,000
(2) Deaths from drug over doses--------------245,000
(3) Deaths from coronavirus------------------- 70,000
I should have used some data where deaths were less than the coronavirus, but this will do. Next, look at the average age of the people who died in each group above:
(1) 31 years
(2) 28 years
(3) 61 years
I need to add on other piece of data and that is life expectancy of each of these groups given the ages:
(1) 84 years
(2) 85 years
(3) 87 years
If these numbers look off, it is because these are conditional probability numbers. As you know, the normal life expectancy numbers are based on people at age "1" and these people are older.
Here is the punch line in "life years" lost due to death.
(1) 84 - 31 X 125,000 = 6,625,000
(2) 85 - 28 X 245,000 = 13,965,000
(3) 87 - 61 X 70,000 = 1,560,000
Notice that the impact of the coronavirus is clearly much less in life years than the other two forms of death. What we need to do is to totally revise how we look at the data related to the cause of deaths and life years is the parameter that we all should be using. With the normal data and analysis, auto deaths are 2 times that of the coronavirus, but if you look at it terms of life years, it is 4.2 times. That is a big difference and I think I used a conservative number for the coronavirus of 61 average years of age. Had I use a higher number, the difference would have been even greater.
