99% of all Covid-19 deaths in New York are associated with co-morbidity conditions.

A useful piece throughout. From Do the Divergent Results of COVID-19 Antibody Studies Reflect Real Differences? by Jacob Sullum.

He raises a question which I wondered about three months ago, towards the beginning of the crisis and have not focused since.

Alan Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, argues that age is a proxy for serious preexisting medical conditions, which are also associated with a much higher death rate and become more common as people get older. He notes that underlying conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, respiratory illnesses, and immune system suppression have been involved in at least 99 percent of COVID-19 deaths in New York City.

"The absolutely critical and widely misunderstood point here is that 'underlying conditions' are THE only risk that virtually all fatal cases of COVID-19 had in common—not age," Reynolds writes. "That misunderstanding arose because old people are far more likely to have one or more of these conditions (and because more old people die of this and almost every other fatal risk). But it's about time to stop echoing the fallacy that this virus kills old people, rather than sick people."

Old age correlates strongly with prevalence of co-morbidities. Does age itself as an independent variable have much predictive value independent of co-morbidities. That was the question I had three months ago and which I don't think I have seen any research on since then.

Would be interesting to know as it would allow much more effective use of scarce resources by better targeting policies toward those truly at greater risk.