I’m am offering this as a PSA. This is a critical point. Don’t let your guard down just because you are hanging out with friends.
Beware: People Infected with COVID Are Not Safe Even Though They Are Your Friends or Family
I’m am offering this as a PSA. This is a critical point. Don’t let your guard down just because you are hanging out with friends.
One should rarely expose oneself to any disease when there are easy and inexpensive means to prevent it. Thus, I endorse the specific recommendation to beware of friends and enemies equally.
I’m not very smart, but I can do basic arithmetic. I figured that if someone was sick enough to be hospitalized by her/his physician, the patient had a bad case of COVID19. So, I found hospitalization rates for the disease and used that as a proxy for seriousness. The primary risk factor seems to be age, so I looked at hospitalization rates by age https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122354/covid-19-us-hospital-rate-by-age/.
Below age seventeen, the rate is negligible, about the same number as those with major complications such as heart, lung or kidney disease. From eighteen through seventy-four it is still low. Ages 75 through 84 the hospitalization rate rises to five percent, and 85 and over it is eight percent.
Those are hospitalization rates. Rates of admission to ICU, or use of a ventilator, or death, are considerably lower. COVID19 is in fact about as dangerous as seasonal influenza and needs to be taken seriously. It is not a cause for panic. The only unusual aspect is that it is incredibly contagious