Read on Twitter
1/ I was disappointed to read the following statement by Sam Bowman ( @s8mb) in @euronews today: "Right now, in hospitals in the UK, most of the wards are filled with younger people, people in their 40s and 50s and 60s, who have decades left to live." https://www.euronews.com/2021/01/26/grassroots-anti-myth-website-aims-to-bust-covid-misinformation
2/ Sam said this in an article about his new "grassroots anti-myth" website that "aims to bust Covid misinformation". That's a laudable aim, but if he's sincere about that he shouldn't be spreading myths about the virus himself.
3/ The claim that the winter resurgence of Covid poses a greater risk to younger people than the first wave, or that there are more younger Covid patients in hospital wards now than older people, is a myth.
4/ A senior doctor investigated the first of these claims – that the age profile of Covid patients hospitalised this winter is younger than it was last spring – for Lockdown Sceptics on 17th Jan. https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/01/17/#are-covid-19-patients-in-hospital-really-getting-younger
5/ He concluded: "I was unable to find any significant increase in younger patients, either from the latest NHS Hospital data, the ONS death data or the ICNARC ICU audit data to support his assertion."
6/ What about Sam's claim that "most of the wards are filled with younger people, people in their 40s and 50s and 60s, who have decades left to live"? I asked the same senior medic to have a look at the latest data and he came to a similar conclusion.
7/ The recently published NHS stats spreadsheet showing age stratified COVID hospital admissions from 12th Oct – 15th Jan show that 77% of admissions in that period were aged 55 and over and 63% were 65 and over.
8/ As of today, there are 32,337 covid inpatients in English hospitals. Assuming the same age stratification as 12th Oct – 15th Jan, 11,965 of these are under 65 and the remainder – 20,372 – are aged 65 and over.
9/ Don't get me wrong. 11,965 under-65 year-olds is a lot of younger people. But it's misleading to say they are filling "most of the wards". It's just over one third of the total.
10/ In the same "myth-busting" article, Sam went on to say about these "younger" Covid inpatients: "Unfortunately, lots of those people are going to die..." The word "lots" has no specific value, but I think it's reasonable to interpret that as meaning at least 10% will die.
11/ According to this study of Covid inpatients in French hospitals, the CFR by age breaks down as follows:
0-9 – 0.01%
10-19 – 0.02%
20-29 – 0.11%
30-39 – 0.44%
40-49 – 1.24%
50-59 – 4.56%
60-69 – 11.81%
70-79 – 22.73%
80-89 – 37.8%
90+ – 21.28% https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243606
0-9 – 0.01%
10-19 – 0.02%
20-29 – 0.11%
30-39 – 0.44%
40-49 – 1.24%
50-59 – 4.56%
60-69 – 11.81%
70-79 – 22.73%
80-89 – 37.8%
90+ – 21.28% https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243606
12/ While it's true that just over 10% of 60-69 year-old Covid inpatients are likely to die (based on the above data), the median CFR for Covid inpatients in their 40s, 50s and 60s is considerably less that 10%.
13/ More generally, it's a myth that Covid-19 poses the same risk to younger people as it does to older people. According to the @ONS's latest coronavirus roundup, 75% of deaths involving COVID-19 in England + Wales have been of people aged 75 and over. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19roundup/2020-03-26#health
14/ A BBC report on 19th Nov (based on @ONS data) included this summary: "The average age of people who have died with Covid is above 80 with more than nine in 10 of the deaths among the over 65s..."
15/ So while it's true that there are some younger people in hospital with Covid-19 – and some younger people have died of Covid-19 – you shouldn't try and frighten people by exaggerating the risk to younger people, however good your intentions.
16/ The problem with @s8mb's "myth-busting" website is that it only tries to correct misleading claims made by lockdown sceptics (whom it smears as "Covid sceptics").
17/ If @s8mb was just concerned with scientific accuracy and "calling out" misinformation, rather than promoting the case for lockdowns, he wouldn't spread myths of his own calculated to frighten the public into supporting the Government.
18/ One last point. It's wrong to describe @s8mb's new site as a "grassroots" initiative. He set it up with @NeilDotObrien, a member of the Govt. If you set up an apparently independent site with a Tory MP to support the policies of a Tory Govt the correct term is "astroturfing".
