I realize it would have taken three or four minutes for an intern to look up, but in Utah just over 3/4 of people who died from coronavirus had a pre-existing condition.

But wait, there’s more …

Run down the list of pre-existing conditions …

9% of Americans have chronic pulmonary disease
We don’t have good numbers on former smokers but there are more former smokers than current smokers (14%). So that’s 28%.
48% of Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease ...

Almost 10% of Americans have diabetes.
7% of Americans have an immune disorder.
2% of Americans have a chronic liver disorder.
15% of Americans have chronic kidney disorder.
1:6 people worldwide have a neurological disorder.

So doing a little math …
9+14+14+48+10+7+2+15+15 equals 134% of people have a pre-existing condition.

Obviously that’s not valid math, but it shows that if you are a virus randomly selecting parts of the population a large portion will have pre-existing conditions.

But it also ignores the fact that most of these conditions are chronic, meaning you have them but they won’t necessarily kill you imminently.

Diabetes might kill you eventually, BUT FOR coronavirus those diabetes patients would still be among us.

The point being, don’t dismiss human beings dying BECAUSE OF CORONAVIRUS simply because it helps you sleep better at night because they had some other health issue. Because there’s a good chance you or someone you know has one too. And that doesn’t make their death less tragic.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

This is a really, really good explanation of the point I’m making here … Worth nine minutes. https://twitter.com/ZDoggMD/status/1300275404398231552

Also, as this video makes clear, co-morbidities are not the same as pre-existing conditions. That’s an entirely different layer.

Another really good thread on this topic (and I normally would not praise anyone whose handle is “CougFan82”). https://twitter.com/CougFan82/status/1299963384255844353