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Hospitalization Rates by Age Group

By May 7, 2021Commentary

DD did the work to create this great visual of the rates of hospitalizations by age group.  The hospitalizations are lagged a week to account for time from case identification to hospitalization.  Contrary to Dr. Osterholm’s belief, this chart indicates no change in the rate of hospitalization recently for younger age groups.  At around age 40 through the middle age groups you do see a slight blip up, but really only going back to the rates prevalent in the fall.  Also note that in the two older groups, rates appear to have swung up.  That I believe is a clear vaccination effect.  The people for whom vaccination is not effective are also very likely to be highly susceptible to infection and serious disease.  I would expect that in a highly vaccinated cohort, we will see far fewer cases, but among those cases there will be some severe illness.  It is an interesting question why in case bumps or waves  the rate may increase.  Could be that outside of those periods a lot of cases are not really infections, but false and low positives, which would make the hospitalization rate appear lower, could be that during a wave people have higher viral loads and more severe disease.  But it really isn’t much of a swing.

Join the discussion 4 Comments

  • Matt says:

    Am I reading this correctly that 30-39 year olds have a roughly 4% hospitalization case rate? So about last 1 on 25 who test positive end up getting hospitalized?

    • Kevin Roche says:

      Yes, right now somewhere around 3.5% to 4%, that is of reported cases, we don’t know total infections, maybe 3 times the detected number. And we don’t know how many got the virus in the hospital or went in for another reason and tested positive

  • J. Thomas says:

    So that would be 1 out of 75, or 1.3%. I’ve found other sources that have the number of infected at 5x, especially if you factor in the testing s***show. That puts this age range at .8%. Turn off the boob-tube and get on with your lives everyone !

  • J. Thomas says:

    Another twist to the numbers, in our area of PA the hospitals bought up all of the local private clinics. So now anytime you see your PCP, you’re registered with the hospital system. I’ve ben told that they have no choice but to refer all possible C19 cases up the line. So it becomes a ‘hospital case’ the way they’re cooking the books. Since the fear mongering has been successful, most with head colds and allergies are now seeing their PCP’s and are thus referred. There’s no possible way to use any publicized numbers to make any judgments/decisions about how to care for yourself. It’s criminal !

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