The Elderly Health-Vulnerable : Deprived of a Decade of Life by COVID-19

"We need to be honest with people and tell them regardless of what decisions are made that there are going to be people dying who sadly might not have otherwise died."
"We looked at how long people with those 11 different [serious chronic health conditions] conditions, and in different combinations of those conditions would be expected to live. Then we basically subtracted one from the other."
"So, from Wales, we could find out that an 80-year-old person who had high blood pressure and diabetes, but who didn't have kidney disease, might be expected to live seven years. That means an 80-year-old with COVID-9 who had that same set of conditions had lost seven years of life."
"Nobody is suggesting they [people under age 50 with COVID] only had a short time to live."
"[Most people] lost considerably more than the 'one-to-two' years suggested by some commentators."
"But as countries move to re-open] this is one-half of a balancing judgement that needs to be made. It's not an easy decision. Undoubtedly there are people who are having worse outcomes following things like heart attacks and strokes as a consequence of the fact they're frightened to go to hospital [for fear of contracting COVID]."
"We need to do a similar exercise for these indirect effects of COVID-19 in order to make sensible decisions."
Dr.David McAllister, University of Glasgow, Scotland

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Most onlookers, those in the fields of science or medicine, or among the general population, assume that the disproportionate deaths attributed to the dire effects of the novel coronavirus on the elderly do not deprive them of many years of their lives. It is assumed that they would, under normal circumstances, perhaps live another year or two before succumbing to the effects of their advanced age coupled with chronic health conditions they are burdened with.

Which motivated Dr.David McAllister, a consultant in public health medicine at Public Health Scotland and some of his colleagues to measure the estimated number of years of life actually lost as a result of the health-destructive effects of COVID-19. Their research led them to conclude through analysis, that on average men lose 13 years of their lives, and for women that loss is 11 years. Bearing in mind that COVID appears to devastate more men than women.

Death from COVID-19 results in over ten years of life lost per person

While accounting for high blood pressure, diabetes and other common chronic conditions typical of elderly people dying of the pandemic virus, deprivation of more than a decade of life of those who died of the effects of COVID-19 resulted per person, analogous to the loss of years of life \ from heart disease. Globally there have been 192,125 confirmed deaths from the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University, taking into account severe COVID-19 is the cause of acute respiratory failure.

The research paper was published in Wellcome Open Research. The researchers made use of published data from 6,801 deaths in Italy, studying what proportion of victims had one or more of 11 common chronic conditions; heart failure, stroke, hypertension, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among them. Use was also made of World Health Organization life tables and health-care data from Wales.

The focus was mostly on deaths in the 50-plus age demographic since so few deaths occurred in people younger, and additionally comments on scant years of life lost at advanced age and health condition fail to arise with the deaths of younger people. YLL (estimated years of life lost) turned out to be more than a decade of deaths in the elderly and health-impaired from COVID-19 deaths. Of confirmed cases worldwide, roughly one-third (38 percent) are identified in people aged 60 and older.

Medical staff applaud as a woman greets her mother (C), who was healed from the coronavirus (COVID-19) after having spend more than a month in a coma, upon her discharge from the hospital in the city of Ariana near the capital Tunis on April 24, 2020. FETHI BELAID/AFP via Getty Images