Right now, the deep state is too shallow.
The Coronavirus’s Unique Threat to the South
More young people in the South seem to be dying from COVID-19. Why?
VANN R. NEWKIRK II
APRIL 2, 2020
theatlantic.com
Editor's Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here.
In a matter of weeks, the coronavirus has gone from a novel, distant threat to an enemy besieging cities and towns across the world. The burden of COVID-19 and the economic upheaval wrought by the measures to contain it feel epochal. Humanity now has a common foe, and we will grow increasingly familiar with its face.
Yet plenty of this virus’s aspects remain unknown. The developing wisdom—earned the hard way in Wuhan, Washington, and Italy—has been that older people and sicker people are substantially more likely to suffer severe illness or die from COVID-19 than their younger, healthier counterparts. Older people are much more likely than young people to have lung disease, kidney disease, hypertension, or heart disease, and those conditions are more likely to transform a coronavirus infection into something nastier. But what happens when these assumptions don’t hold up, and the young people battling the pandemic share the same risks?
The world is about to find out. So far, about one in 10 deaths in the United States from COVID-19 has occurred in the four-state arc of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, according to data assembled by the COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer collaboration incubated at The Atlantic. New Orleans is on pace to become the next global epicenter of the pandemic. The virus has a foothold in southwestern Georgia, and threatens to overwhelm hospitals in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The coronavirus is advancing quickly across the American South. And in the American South, significant numbers of younger people are battling health conditions that make coronavirus outbreaks more perilous.
The numbers emerging seem to indicate that more young people in the South are dying from COVID-19. Although the majority of coronavirus-related deaths in Louisiana are still among victims over 70 years old, 43 percent of all reported deaths have been people under 70. In Georgia, people under 70 make up 49 percent of reported deaths. By comparison, people under 70 account for only 20 percent of deaths in Colorado. “Under 70” is a broad category, not really useful for understanding what’s going on. But digging deeper reveals more concerning numbers. In Louisiana, people ages 40 to 59 account for 22 percent of all deaths. The same age range in Georgia accounts for 17 percent of all deaths. By comparison, the same age group accounts for only about 10 percent of all deaths in Colorado, and 6 percent of all deaths in Washington State. These statistics suggest that middle-aged and working-age adults in the two southern states are at much greater risk than their counterparts elsewhere; for some reason, they are more likely to die from COVID-19.
All data in this stage of the pandemic are provisional and incomplete, and all conclusions are subject to change. But a review of the international evidence shows that, as far as we know, the outbreaks currently expanding in the American South are unique—and mainly because of how many people in their working prime are dying. Spain’s official accounting of the pandemic last week showed that deaths among people under 70 years old make up only about 12 percent of total deaths in the country. Case-fatality rates around the world are notoriously tricky because they are based in part on the extent of testing, but a recent study of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, found a case-fatality rate of 0.5 percent among adults ages 30 to 59. The current estimate of fatality rates in the same age range in Louisiana is about four times that.
Read: The official coronavirus numbers are wrong, and everyone knows it
A recent analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation might shed some light on what’s going on here. The paper, drawing on the CDC guidelines, identifies people who may be at risk of serious complications from COVID-19. Kaiser’s at-risk group includes all people over 60 years old and all adults younger than 60 who also have heart disease, cancer, lung disease, or diabetes. In each state, older people are the majority of the people considered to be at risk of complications. But the Deep South and mid-South form a solid bloc of states where younger adults are much more at risk. In Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi, relatively young people make up more than a quarter of the vulnerable population. Compare that with the coronavirus’s beachhead in Washington State, where younger adults make up only about 19 percent of the risk group.
Tricia Neuman, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, says this analysis points to the underlying issues that might complicate or worsen the pandemic in the South. “Due to high rates of conditions like lung disease and heart disease and obesity, the people living in these states are at risk if they get the virus,” Neuman told me. These aren’t “people who are sick, but these are people who have underlying comorbidities that put them at higher risk of serious illness if they get infected.”
continues at theatlantic.com |
