Posted 3 June 2020
COUNTING ON DEATH – The Power of Averages.
Do you know someone who is under 20 years old? A son, daughter, grandchild maybe?
Well here’s an interesting fact: That person was a little more likely to die in 2016 than they were in 2015.
Only slightly more likely and that was simply because 2016 had an extra day. February 29th made all the difference.
Everyday there is a small chance that we will die. Irrespective of COVID19, every day you wake up there is a small chance it will be your last. Forgive me for being morbid, but it is all in the interest of perspective.
For someone under 20 that chance is of course incredibly small. Very incredibly small. But if a year has one extra day in it, that is one extra day for that chance to be applied.
Of course we know it is small. I cannot imagine many parents waking up on 1st January 2016 thinking they had to wrap their teenage son or daughter in extra cotton wool that year because of the leap day.
And likewise I am sure no parents woke up on 1st January 2020 with extra concerns for the life expectancy of their children just because there were 366 rather than 365 days ahead.
Then Coronavirus happened.
But here is the thing: The extra risk of someone under 20 dying of COVID19 so far in 2020 is about the same as having a leap day. And assuming that the decline in cases continues that is probably the entirety of the risk for the whole of 2020.
Of course 2020 already has a leap day in it, so that extra risk has been added twice. But that is the entirety of the risk. The chance of an under 20 year old dying of coronavirus is equivalent to 2020 having 367 days rather than 366.
[The data, just so you believe me: In an ‘average’ year 11 under 20 year olds die every day in England; so far 12 under 20 years have died in England with COVID19 on their death registrations].
What of older age groups?
If you are 20-39 year olds, your risk of dying of COVID has been like having 11 extra leap days in 2020. [Again, just to clarify, the number of COVID-linked deaths in 20-39 year olds has been the same number of that age group who would have died in a typical eleven day period in a non-COVID year].
For 40-59 year olds, that risk is equivalent to 26 extra (leap) days. If you are over 59 but under 80, it is like you have lived with the risk of an extra June in 2020 (30 days). The risk to over 80 year olds has been like living with 33 extra days in 2020.
As over half of all deaths in England have been in the over 80 years olds – the median age of death is now over 82.5 – the overall statistic is heavily weighted to this latter age group. So on average it is like we have all lived an extra month in 2020. But do remember this is heavily skewed away from under-20 year olds to over-80 year olds.
To personalise this, the concerns you should have for someone dying (yourself included) from COVID19 has been equivalent to the concern you would have had for that person dying in a typical month last year.
(Analysis based on ONS data published this week and extrapolated with the current downward trend in deaths).
Sometimes there is solace in averages.