I haven’t seen a QALY-based analysis of the fatality data. Odd, because our State is reporting underlying condition stats and age (by decade) and gender of death daily. Pretty easy to take expected years of life remaining, and quality of life given age and underlying conditions and estimate and come up with an estimate to first order of the “quality life years” lost due to COVID.
No one seems to be providing such a QALY estimate.
So, let’s do a quick one.
For 1917, the comparison year, let’s assume excess deaths were from combat and the Spanish Flu.
Combat skews young. So, say, 50 quality years per death.
I don’t see any age-specific bias or bias towards underlying conditions one way or another in Spanish Flu cases given this information. And a lot of cases of healthy adults dying, e.g. Australian miners.
The median age of COVID death in my county has been in the late 70s
Life expectancy tables for US suggest ten years of life remaining for folks in their late 70s. I’ve seen statistics that find degraded quality of life in the last 3 or 4 years of life.
Even without underlying conditions, that puts quality life years lost at 8. Underlying conditions predisposing to COVID death will only make it look worse, driving the 8 down to 7 or 6.
So, for 1917, 50 years lost in combat combined with 30 quality years lost to the “Spanish Flu”...IDK, let’s say 40 years lost per death.
For 2020, COVID excess deaths...6-8 quality years lost.
Even after quibbling with numbers, the quality years of life lost are a factor of 5 higher in 1917 as compared to 2020. Based on this, admittedly rough, “analysis”. (You get what you pay for.)
I really would like to see a formal QALY analysis of COVID, instead of the ones that many people have already done in their heads.
What about people that didn't die this year, but experienced a high degradation of life quality? What about people that experienced a 'low quality' year this year, being in ICUs for weeks?
A scientific analysis about years of life lost was done for COVID fatalities. It was in the press about half a year ago. It was a little over 10 years on average, even considering the preexisting conditions.
Linked article says in Sweden for COVID-19 you count QALY in months not years.
'The observed temporary excess mortality likely arises because people in vulnerable groups die weeks or months earlier than they would otherwise, due to the timing and severity of the unusual external event.'
https://www.healthguideinfo.com/health-informatics/p6185/
I haven’t seen a QALY-based analysis of the fatality data. Odd, because our State is reporting underlying condition stats and age (by decade) and gender of death daily. Pretty easy to take expected years of life remaining, and quality of life given age and underlying conditions and estimate and come up with an estimate to first order of the “quality life years” lost due to COVID.
No one seems to be providing such a QALY estimate.
So, let’s do a quick one.
For 1917, the comparison year, let’s assume excess deaths were from combat and the Spanish Flu.
Combat skews young. So, say, 50 quality years per death.
I don’t see any age-specific bias or bias towards underlying conditions one way or another in Spanish Flu cases given this information. And a lot of cases of healthy adults dying, e.g. Australian miners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
So let’s say 30 quality years lost per death.
COVID skews old.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...
The median age of COVID death in my county has been in the late 70s
Life expectancy tables for US suggest ten years of life remaining for folks in their late 70s. I’ve seen statistics that find degraded quality of life in the last 3 or 4 years of life.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-09-healthy-lifestyle-age...
Even without underlying conditions, that puts quality life years lost at 8. Underlying conditions predisposing to COVID death will only make it look worse, driving the 8 down to 7 or 6.
So, for 1917, 50 years lost in combat combined with 30 quality years lost to the “Spanish Flu”...IDK, let’s say 40 years lost per death.
For 2020, COVID excess deaths...6-8 quality years lost.
Even after quibbling with numbers, the quality years of life lost are a factor of 5 higher in 1917 as compared to 2020. Based on this, admittedly rough, “analysis”. (You get what you pay for.)
I really would like to see a formal QALY analysis of COVID, instead of the ones that many people have already done in their heads.