Another possible confounder (sorta in the other direction) is the “inoculum”, i.e. how many virus particles you get from the outside. It’s big if you’re a nurse and patients sneeze in your face all day. It’s small if you touch a glove that touched a door that touched a hand that touched a sick person’s tissue. It seems to be common knowledge (AFAICT) that bigger inoculum leads to worse symptoms for any disease. (Why? I guess there’s kinda a race between the virus reproducing itself and the immune system figuring out how to fight it, and a big inoculum gives the virus a head start? Just guessing.)
Anyway, the anecdotes I’ve seen about healthy young adults dying of COVID-19 tend to be stories of doctors and nurses … thus with presumably very big inocula. (I haven’t systematically searched, that’s just what I’ve come across.) Maybe this wouldn’t generalize to low-inocula contexts, which are probably more common in the general public...
Another possible confounder (sorta in the other direction) is the “inoculum”, i.e. how many virus particles you get from the outside. It’s big if you’re a nurse and patients sneeze in your face all day. It’s small if you touch a glove that touched a door that touched a hand that touched a sick person’s tissue. It seems to be common knowledge (AFAICT) that bigger inoculum leads to worse symptoms for any disease. (Why? I guess there’s kinda a race between the virus reproducing itself and the immune system figuring out how to fight it, and a big inoculum gives the virus a head start? Just guessing.)
Anyway, the anecdotes I’ve seen about healthy young adults dying of COVID-19 tend to be stories of doctors and nurses … thus with presumably very big inocula. (I haven’t systematically searched, that’s just what I’ve come across.) Maybe this wouldn’t generalize to low-inocula contexts, which are probably more common in the general public...