Coronavirus: Shortening our lives by a year

Getting COVID steals a year of your remaining actuarial life, regardless of your age. That's the interesting conclusion of this chart (not mine) that plots the COVID infection mortality rates versus age cohort on the same axes as actuarial chance of death in one normal year.

Of course, there are lots of caveats in this apples-to-oranges comparison. It's simple age cohorts, US normal death rates, and -- most importantly -- assumes we still succeed in flattening the curve enough for medical care to be there for those who need it. If not, it might be 2-3 years of actuarial life rather than 1.

(It's a bit hard to find in the comment thread: the data is IFRs from the Imperial study, i.e. P(death|tests positive AND ventilators available), not P(death) overall.)

For those still reading under the fold, this type of lifespan-reduction analysis from risks taken, voluntarily or involuntarily, is explored further (8 years ago, so pre COVID) by Prof David Spiegelhalter at Cambridge University in his concept of microlives.

[Originally posted on LinkedIn and facebook].