The Coronavirus has been horrible. Johns Hopkins reports that COVID 19 has killed over 250,000 people around the world and close to 70,000 American's. A lot of us are desperate for good news in regards to this ending. Let's try to give you some, starting with younger people. If you're a parent worried about your school age child understand that the CDC says the amount of people who needed hospitalization under eighteen is 0.1! So if your child does get Coronavirus, there's a 99.9 percent chance that their immune system will fight it off like every other sickness they face.
The CDC reports that 8 out of 10 people going to the hospital because of COVID are 65 or older. In fact if you're 18-49 the chances of being hospitalized is under 3 percent.
Also if you're younger, the chances of you dying from COVID 19 are almost non existent. 80% of the deaths are from people 65 and older. About 90 percent of that group was living in an assisted living facility. Of people who have died of COVID 19 only 2.8 percent were under 45. More than half of those people were over 40.
So there's a clear challenge that we can improve. Defend our seniors, especially those who are in assisted living communities.
By looking at the United States and the approximately 330,000,000 citizens only 1036 have died of COVID 19 under the age of 45. That's 0.000003 percent.
And the other good news is that hospitals, even in NY, have not become overwhelmed. Here in SC DHEC reports that hospital beds are plentiful with the most being used in the Midlands at 64 percent and fewest in the Lowcountry at 53 percent.
A vaccine may be on the way as the first human testing began this week in Germany, but there are 20 other companies who are also working on vaccines and expect tests to begin in the next few weeks.
Finally as health officials have been able to learn so much about COVID 19 in the past few months, the new data is leading them to a plan where we can safely re open schools and businesses. A few weeks ago Immunology.org explained that while herd immunity would be better than a vaccine, it didn't seem possible for 60 percent of the population to be exposed to COVID 19 in order to build the antibodies required to kill it off and protect our seniors. However recent tests reveal that many more American's have already had Coronavirus and didn't even know that they went through it! The LA Times today reports that it is much more contagious than originally thought and a report from that paper on April 20th showed hundreds of thousand of LA residents already had the antibody's!
To reach herd immunity we need 180-200 million people to have been exposed to it. We currently have 1.6 million confirmed cases but if the Times is correct and it's already been spread to over 100 million American's we are rapidly approaching the end! Live Science reports that there are 12 different home antibody tests that are approved. Like this one from Pixel if you would like to test and see if you have the antibody's. Hopefully you've already gone through it and didn't even know!