March 25, 2020 David Spiegallter *

An article by Nick Triggle on the BBC’s website raises the question of whether many deaths from COVID-19 would happen anyway as part of the “normal” risks faced by people, particularly the elderly and those with chronic health problems who are the victims. The main corona virus disease. To provide some background, I’ve taken a look at how much of a “normal” risk is COVID.

It is always useful to remember that we will all die at some point, and the rate at which we do is faithfully recorded in the life tables provided by the Office for National Statistics.

This provides annual “risk” – the proportion of people in each year of life, who do not reach their next birthday. Plotted below on a logarithmic scale, showing an early peak due to congenital disease and birth trauma, then a minimum around age 9 or 10 (no one in human history has been as safe as a child in contemporary elementary school), then a markedly linear steady increase, regardless About a sad bump in my late teens and early twenties, its cause is pretty clear. This linearity on the logarithmic scale corresponds to an exponential increase – the proportion of people who die increases each year by about 9%, regardless of age. Therefore, the average risk of death doubles in 8 years.