Life and Death with Covid-19 in South Carolina.

I am about to enter into the higher risk category for Covid-19 when I turn 65 next month. This of course means that I know many people, friends and relatives that are in an older age group. These include my mother, siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts. Most of the people I grew up with, are older than the general population and therefore at a higher risk. So what I am about to point out is not to make light of deaths of older people, but it is a reality of this virus. Though known, the threat to elder Americans far outweighs that to younger and even middle age persons. This critical aspect of the Covid-19 drama is basically being ignored.
This allows what are actually minor or even large changes in data to be exaggerated in importance compared to their actual affect on society.
To help make my point I have decided to take the statistics for South Carolina in order to show how the epidemic is being exaggerated. I do this because I live here and because individual states are more up to date than national data. However South Carolina is not in any way abnormal in regards to how Covid-19 affects the general population.
All of the data is current as of Friday 6/19/2020.

*In South Carolina the median age for those who tested positive (cases) is 42 years old. Which means that half of all cases are persons over 42 and half are under 42. The median age in South Carolina overall population is 39.2 years.
* The median age of those who died from Covid-19 is 76 years old.
* People over the age of 70 represent 15% (3395) of all cases but represent 65% (406) of all deaths (625)
* People over the age of 60 represent 85% (531) of all deaths
*People under the age of 60 represent just 15% (94) of all Covid-19 deaths in the state of South Carolina though they represent 73% (16,520) of all cases (22,630).
*Only 4.4% (28) people under the age of 50 in South Carolina have died from Covid-19 though they represent 58% (13,125) of all cases.
*In South Carolina 48% (292) of deaths were patients within a nursing home.I do not know if this count includes or excludes patients that were moved to a hospital then died. I do not know the average life expectancy of a South Carolina nursing home patient but the average age on admission is 79. In the United States the average age of a nursing home patient is 83 and average life expectancy upon entering nursing home is 13 months.

The average life expectancy in South Carolina is 76.95 years, one of the lowest in the nation (41st). This is the result of underlying health issues that prevail in the population. This means that almost half of all Covid-19 deaths in South Carolina are of persons beyond the average life expectancy of the state. Given that nearly half of all deaths are from persons who are statistically most likely to be in their last fourteen months of life, the actual impact of the virus, other than obviously to loved ones, on society is quite small. All of this does not even take into account underlying health conditions for all age groups that contribute to the seriousness of the virus for all ages.

Currently the South Carolina's hospital capacity is at 70% which would mean that state wide about 3,276 beds are occupied. Of those occupied beds, 670 are with Covid-19 patients. This means that just 14.3% of all of the state's hospital beds are being used by virus patients. One reason that the hospital beds are at 70% occupancy is that for almost two months no so called "elective" surgeries were being done. Elective surgeries are any surgery of any type that can be scheduled, non emergency surgeries but not necessarily unimportant ones. All over the country, our healthcare system is catching up with postponed medical procedures.
For the truest indicator of how far we have come in this cycle of the virus, all you have to do is look at the truest indicator, deaths. Nationally on April 19th the 7 day moving average of daily deaths was 2,164 deaths per day. One month later on May 19th that had dropped to 1,404. As of Friday June 19th the daily national 7 day moving average is 654. During this time, even as testing, thus cases, have increased deaths have fallen. The main reason for this seeming disconnect is that far more of the population that is not at risk is being tested. Literally millions of people that will not be seriously affected by the virus are being tested and of course some are positive. However only a small percentage of these positive cases will be hospitalized and even a much smaller number will die.
The main point of this is that for the vast majority of people, Covid-19 represents a very small risk, even if you contract it. Do you get that impression? No, you have been conditioned to think of Covid 19 as some devastating illness laying waste to the world and the nation. The truth is much more ominous, the public health care bureaucracy, the media and politicians have used this pandemic to scare populations to willingly forfeit their freedoms and futures and they are not letting go.