> I genuinely don't understand why everyone has insisted on talking about COVID-19 in terms of absolute deaths. For everything else like heart disease etc. we talk about statistically "losing X years of life".
We do this because people misunderstand the "losing x years of life" statistics...
> The median age of death for COVID-19 has been at or above the statistical life expectancy.
> Results: Using the standard WHO life tables, YLL per COVID-19 death was 14 for men and 12 for women. After adjustment for number and type of LTCs, the mean YLL was slightly lower, but remained high (11.6 and 9.4 years for men and women, respectively). The number and type of LTCs led to wide variability in the estimated YLL at a given age (e.g. at ≥80 years, YLL was >10 years for people with 0 LTCs, and <3 years for people with ≥6).
> Conclusions: Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and standardised collection of data (including LTC type, severity, and potential confounders such as socioeconomic-deprivation and care-home status) is needed to optimise YLL estimates for specific populations, and to understand the global burden of COVID-19, and guide policy-making and interventions.
> For everything else like heart disease etc. we talk about statistically "losing X years of life".
> We do this because people misunderstand the "losing x years of life" statistics...
It makes sense, but this is honestly the first time I've heard anything expressed this way. Perhaps geographical differences.
What I thought you were going to say was what's been annoying the hell out of me all pandemic: no shit [very populous country] has massively higher #new infections and #deaths than [tiny country]..
There's just no value in it beyond internal comparisons over time (which you could do with any externally relevant relative measure too), but that won't stop the press of course! Absolute numbers are bigger!
(Perhaps one day they'll work out they could use it to their advantage - '#UK deaths per billion'...)
For what it's worth I did not mean to imply a relationship between the average median life expectancy for the population as a whole and the life expediency of a person who's reached that age.
As you point out doing so would be a statistical fallacy. E.g. someone who's reached the age of 5 has already made it "past" infant mortality, and therefore has a higher life expectancy than a newborn.
I was using it as a shorthand to reference how lopsided the age distribution of COVID-19 deaths is. We can quibble over whether an 80 year old who's died from it would have lived an extra 0, 1, 5, 10 years.
But even if you were to completely misunderstand how life expectancy works, you'd be a lot more accurate than the GP's reference to a 747 crashing into a mountain, since that example implies deaths from a random sample of the population. Now instead of being off by 5-10 years you're off by many decades.
We do this because people misunderstand the "losing x years of life" statistics...
> The median age of death for COVID-19 has been at or above the statistical life expectancy.
...just like you've done here.
https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75
> Results: Using the standard WHO life tables, YLL per COVID-19 death was 14 for men and 12 for women. After adjustment for number and type of LTCs, the mean YLL was slightly lower, but remained high (11.6 and 9.4 years for men and women, respectively). The number and type of LTCs led to wide variability in the estimated YLL at a given age (e.g. at ≥80 years, YLL was >10 years for people with 0 LTCs, and <3 years for people with ≥6).
> Conclusions: Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and standardised collection of data (including LTC type, severity, and potential confounders such as socioeconomic-deprivation and care-home status) is needed to optimise YLL estimates for specific populations, and to understand the global burden of COVID-19, and guide policy-making and interventions.