COVID is becoming a killer of the young

I didn't know this. Apparently over the last year, COVID has been the leading medical cause of death in the United States among people under 55. Not chronic diseases, not suicide, or other gun episodes -- but COVID.

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According to Inside Medicine:

Many believe that Covid-19 is merely a cold for all young people and a death sentence for a handful of older folks who probably would have died around the same time anyway. 

That is wrong. 

We know there has been extraordinary “excess mortality”—that is more deaths than usual during the pandemic. It’s not just that people dying of cancer happened to have caught Covid in the last weeks of their lives. Rather, people are dying way early—sometimes months, but more often years and decades earlier than they otherwise would have. 

... What surprises many is just how many young and middle-aged adults have died. Nearly 250,000 people under the age of 65 have died of Covid-19 in the United States so far. Around 61,000 of these deaths were in people under the age of 50. 

Those of us 65 and older are 90% fully vaccinated in the United States. Covid can kill vaccinated people, but in the most part, serious outcomes -- deaths -- happen to unvaccinated people, who are largely younger.

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We're very COVID conscious around here at the moment as a household member has tested positive. So far, so good here.