What Young, Healthy People Have to Fear From COVID-19 – The Atlantic

But it does. It really does. Heres why.

Many young people navigating this pandemic are asking themselves a two-part health question: What are the odds that I get infected? And if I do get infected, is that really a big deal?

Much of my reporting has focused on the first question. To summarize that work in a sentence: People are at highest risk of infection in communities with a sizable outbreak, when they spend long amounts of time in closed, unventilated spaces where other people close by are talking or otherwise emitting virus-laden globs of spit, and everything is worse when people arent wearing masks. This advice is easy to give, because the best practices hold across the board, for everybody.

Whats the big deal? is a harder question, because the person-to-person outcomes of this disease are so maddeningly variable. The most universal answer must begin with the observation that death is not a synonym for risk.

Read: COVID-19 can last for several months

COVID-19 presents an array of health challenges that are serious, if not imminently fatal. The disease occasionally sends peoples immune system into a frenzy, wreaking havoc on their internal organs. Several studies of asymptomatic patients revealed that more than half of them had lung abnormalities. A March study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that 7 to 20 percent of sick patients showed heart damage associated with COVID-19.

As my colleague Ed Yong explained, many COVID-19 patients experience protracted illness. These long-haulers suffer from a diabolical grab bag of symptoms, including chronic fatigue, shortness of breath, unrelenting fevers, gastrointestinal problems, lost sense of smell, hallucinations, short-term-memory loss, bulging veins, bruising, gynecological problems, and an erratic heartbeat. And according to the neuroscientist David Putrino, chronic patients are typically young (the average age in his survey is 44), female, and formerly healthy.

We dont know how many long-haulers are out there. But by combining the conclusion of several well-regarded studies, we can arrive at a decent estimate.

For men in their 30s, like me, about 1.2 percent of COVID-19 infections result in hospitalization, according to a July study published in Science. Once the disease has progressed to this point, the risk of chronic illness soars. Research from Italy found that roughly nine in 10 hospitalized patients said they still had symptoms after two months. A British study reported a similar risk of long-term illness.

Now the math: When you multiply the hospitalization rate for 30-something men (about 1.2 percent) by the chronic-illness rate of hospitalized patients (almost 90 percent), you get about 1 percent. That means a guy my age has one-in-100 chance of developing a long-term illness after contracting COVID-19. For context, the estimated infection-fatality rate for a 60-something is 0.7 percent, according to the same study in Science.

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What Young, Healthy People Have to Fear From COVID-19 - The Atlantic