It actually looks more like a dose-related event. With community acquired cases - perhaps because they have a low initial inoculum - the immune systems of the young seem to be able to keep up against the virus and these people either generally have mild or asymptomatic cases. For older people, the virus gets ahead of them. By the time their immune systems start to catch upviral titers are higher and a lot of damage has been done. Cytokines storm plays a part, but seriously, anyone getting ARDS from ANY source runs a 50% mortality. That’s not unique for coronavirus.

it’s grimmer for healthcare workers. They needed to take extreme precautions - something like a CWDE mask while in the presence of seriously ill people and a shower Devon at the end of shift. Few of them did and despite being medical personnel, allowed themselves to be exposed with a HUGE inoculum. And size matters when it comes to exposure. Because the virus magnification went faster with large exposures, the healthcare workers case-fatality rate wound up far higher than age-matched patients from community exposures. Especially in places like Wuhan where the healthcare people were so overworked they let their own guard down and paid the price.

Cytokine storms do appear to be involved with COVID patients who have severe respiratory issues.

Being young doesn't automatically mean your strong immune system will run amuck, in this case it looks like young people's immune systems usually work smarter, not harder. The few young fatalities are probably those cases where the immune system did go haywire.

Spanish flu was a different bug, and was more prone to a runaway immune response in young people.

More viral particles will result in a faster progression (reproductive math).

Worth noting, that you are statistically unlikely to get infected from low particle-count exposures, the risk of getting any sort of infection from a single particle is astronomically low. Kind of like getting pregnant... need literally millions of swimmers to have a reasonable chance.

Never force things like inoculation...let Darwin take its course.

Ideally, expensive life-saving medical care for a preventable illness should be withheld where someone exercised their constitutional right to decline a vaccine for said illness.

Everyone wins!

people forget that there are some young people with serious chronic illnesses too, like Type 1 diabetes, malignancies, cystic fibrosis,asthma, cerebral palsy, and sickle cell anemia. Many of these kids are as labile as on older person with COPD. They are the ones that influenza usually picks off on that end of the age spectrum. They are also the ones that appear to be suffering the majority of the young fatalities with coronavirus as well.

might want to brush up on the concept of herd immunity

Moon landings didn’t happen either, and don’t forget the school shootings being hoaxes, all part of the plot to take our guns away.

Isn’t the real reason for the cap is that it won’t fit over the tinfoil hat?

Um, no. My premise assumes that an inoculation is available to everyone. Obviously this is not the case today, nor will it be for a while, for COVID.

But if people want to decline inoculations for things for which most people are inoculated, they should have that right...as long as they’re literally only endangering themselves.

And society will impose costs for those choices which those choosers should have to pay—not being able to have a doctor, not having care workers, and not receiving medical care for the preventable illness are all valid and predictable costs. Cost/benefit=free market.

Actually influenza deaths are much lower in the USA. See below. Typically we see less than 10k a year and typically less than 5k. Not to long ago, CDC policy was changed to report influenza with pneumonia deaths together. I'm not going to get into what caused that change in public health policy or why, that is a discussion outside of an airline pilots bulletin board. But, that being said, until there is a reliable mass produced IgG, immunoglobulin G, test to determine actual virus infection rate into the populating we are stuck waiting for a vaccine. I would expect we're 3 months from the IgG test being wildly available. That will help with public transportation.

From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (range: 195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (range: 8868-18,306) in the United States due to the (H1N1)pdm09 virus. These are real numbers with a poor vaccine that year. The trivalent vaccine that year actually completely missed with the quadravalent giving a small response for that H1N1 strain.

News stories and pictures of human patients getting a shot are great for ratings, politicians and stock bumps but we are no where near a vaccine for wide distribution. Many of these studies aren't even giving real vaccines, but just safety studies of delivery platforms. Moderna took a swing and miss already.

Right now J and J does have a candidate and they are taking taking a huge risk by developing and manufacturing concurrently with development. Quite impressive as their risk is high and payoff may never come

Steps for j and j..

1.. refine lead antigen to promote immunological response.
2.. finalize formula and delivery platform
2.. perform carc and mutagenic studies
2.. Perform animal clinical studies
September
3... phase 1 in human clinical study.. small scale
3.. manufacturing and engineering studies
3.. compile data, submissions to FDA
3.. laboratory work
December or January
4.. initiate phase 2a and 2b in human clinical studies... large scale
4... finalize final formula and delivery platform
4.. stability and shipping studies.
4.. manufacturing
4... laboratory work..
4.. compile data and submit to fda.

Maybe next year sometime
5. Large scale phase 3 concurrent with limited approval..
.. this would be how much of the population will start receiving the vaccine ahead of a formal approval.
5.. manufacturing
5... laboratory work..
5.. compile data and submit to fda.

6.. final FDA approval
7.. broad release of the vaccine
7.. collect post approval safety and efficacy data

This is all a very, very, very very advanced timeline. One little hiccup in any step could doom the vaccine and your basically starting from zero.

A few more are close but j and j has the resources. Merk and Sanofi Aventis would be my other bets as they have very good vaccine and manufacturing abilities with very large scientific knowledge banks.

Vaccines are tough to develop. Coronavirus vaccines are difficult, and fingers crossed one is effective soon.