What we know so far about who’s at risk for COVID-19—and why the government isn’t doing more to protect us. Action Alert!
Factors such as age, gender, race and underlying medical conditions make this virus much more dangerous for some, less so for others. Given these different risks, the government should be funding research into how we can protect ourselves from COVID-19 infection with nutrition and lifestyle changes, but they ignore these approaches because they don’t make money for drug companies.
What are your risk factors?
Age
- Children make up 22% of the population, but only 7% of confirmed cases. Children with the virus tend to develop symptoms like fever and cough at a lower rate (73%) compared to adults (93%).
- However, a mysterious inflammatory illness seems to be afflicting children and is believed to be linked to COVID-19 infection.
- Infants, unlike children, are a high-risk group. Of the 95 infants in the CDC study, 62% were hospitalized, compared to 14% among 1- to 17-year-olds.
- Researchers found that people younger than 30 years were 40% less likely to die of the infection than those 30 to 59 years.
- The share of fatalities among those infected rises significantly by age group:
The chart above was originally posted here and uses data provided by New York Health detailing age-related deaths, comorbidities and deaths among those whose ages were not identified.
Gender
- While the US does not currently have gender related statistics available, data from around the world confirms that men are more than twice as likely to die from the virus as women.
- The number of those infected is evenly distributed between genders (though data is incomplete due to lack of reporting data from US and other countries).
- Studies indicate that estrogen may play a protective role during Covid-19 infection.
Race
- 42% of deaths from the pandemic, so far, were African Americans, who comprise just over 12% of the total population; African Americans comprise nearly a third of confirmed infections; 80% of those hospitalized for COVID-19 in Georgia were African American.
- 70% of Hispanics surveyed were concerned they would be infected, compared to 60% among blacks and 50% among whites.
- Air pollution and toxic exposures increase the risk of COVID-19 and minorities are more likely to be exposed to higher levels of toxins. People of color are exposed to 38% higher levels of carbon dioxide, which contribute to respiratory problems.
Underlying Health Issues
- According to CDC, 90% of those hospitalized for COVID have an underlying health condition.
- Obese patients under 60 were twice as likely to need acute care as those who are not obese.
- Mortality rates for COVID patients with diabetes (100 million+ Americans have the disease) is three times higher than those without diabetes; people with diabetes are not more likely to contract the virus, but face worse outcomes once infected.
- Cardiovascular disease is the deadliest and most common comorbidity among those hospitalized.
- Because cancer treatments weaken the immune system, patients who have cancer are at a higher risk of developing serious complications from Covid-19. Those suffering from immune diseases also face this increased risk.
- Early reports targeted asthma as a potentially risky comorbidity, but emerging data suggests asthmatics might not be at higher risk.
- Individuals with Type A blood have a higher risk for COVID as compared with non-A blood groups. Type O type risks are significantly lower.
- There is no reported increase in risk among pregnant women.
This is what we know so far. Unfortunately, those who are at higher risk are not being given much advice about how to protect themselves other than “stay at home” and “wash your hands.” The government should 1) be telling people about natural ways of shoring up the body’s immune defenses, such as correcting nutrient deficiencies that millions of Americans suffer from, and 2) committing serious funding to research looking at how diet and lifestyle factors impact COVID-19 infection and resistance. The time to do these studies is now, not months or years later. We must force the government to act.
Action Alert! Tell the NIH, with a copy to Congress, to fund studies of natural ways of preventing COVID-19 infection. Please send your message immediately.
Do your job and stop sponsoring the pharmacidical cartel and instead of truly serving the American people.
I have gotten several emails from noted professionals that state the symptoms that kids are showing are just like those from radio wave sickness and that it might be tied to 5g but no one wants to admit that. With all these schools and places of businesses scrambling to quick put up 5g when no one is around, could it possibly be a culprit??
Great point. Thanks. Keep educating!
NIH
Please study natural non-medical means to reduce the risk of contracting Covid-19.
Thank you
Brian Gibbons
Fairview Park OH
It is just mind boggling to me that there has not been more discussion in this whole pandemic about diet and lifestyle choices. I understand that it is easier to look at the obvious like age, race, or sex, but that is about as shallow and short sited as making judgements and decision based on someone’s attire. Whether it is a pet, an automobile, or your own body, what you put in it and how you treat it have very direct correlations to how well it functions and performs. It is almost as if society want to believe that personal choices have nothing to do with somebody’s health. This really should be investigated! (i.e. how many vegetarians have gotten sick or died from Coronavirus.
“why the government isn’t doing more to protect us”
Are you serious? Look what they do and are trying to do with natural medicine. Do you really want the govt making decision for you?
The govt is not the one that should be making decisions for us. We the people don’t need a nanny. Give us reasonable guide lines and suggestions, but we are the one responsible for protecting ourselves and doing what we can to stay healthy.
AGREED! Well stated, not meaning to wax political, I feel obligated to add an additional comment. First of all, the government could not protect the people from a VIRUS, even if it so wished. More importantly, it is not within the boundaries of their ‘job description’ for they are only to protect us from foreign invasion. Traveling down the food chain, state and local governments also are not only incapable of protecting us from a virus, but are not tasked with that duty. We should be learning all we can about taking care of our own immune system, for who but oneself can know our own body?
The lack of natural treatments the CDC and WHO refuse to explore in the face of such a horrible disease creates a great deal of suspicion among Americans “in the know” about such things, causing us to believe that this is a ploy to vaccinate everyone without safety concerns being addressed because of the push by Trump to make it happen “yesterday.”
Please open your minds and look at the data already out there.
Just because Big Pharma doesn’t make or control natural supplements, does not mean they should not be considered in the equation if they can mitigate symptoms!
Considering the long history of the efficacy of natural therapies in pandemics, and in supporting the immune system, it’s irresponsible to be only searching for drugs to help lessen the infection rate of the Wuhan corona virus.
The best way to prevent any sicknesses is to stay away from vaccines, eat the real food to increase the immunity, the human immune system is given by the Almighty to weather any storms coming our ways. Period.
Thank you for the opportunity
Please tell the truth.
You should fund studies of natural ways of preventing COVID-19 infection. People lives are at stake.
Please fund studies of natural ways of preventing COVID-19 infection.
be for the ppeople not for yourselves ? do more funding than defunding.
Fund studies of natural ways of preventing covid-19 and other coronaviruses. That will empower people to understand what they can do personally to promote health resilience. Before suggesting that natural ways don’t help, it would be more honest to do a study and prove it one way or the other.
Also, integrative health practitioners already know ways to boost health resilience. (The studies showing that people with a good vitamin D level had milder cases of covid-19 was not a surprise to us.) It is close-minded and short-sighted to only look at pharmaceutical approaches. It is time for a much broader look at determinants of health and disease.
I really like ANH and I know Jeffery Smith is up on the fear factor involved in disease. So I’m disappointed that I see here more fear being generated. If you were to present these statistics as they are (as historically derived statistics) instead of presenting them as possible risk, that would help to take away the fear. These are historical statistics and do not show cause and effect. Just because 42% of deaths from the pandemic were African American does NOT mean African Americans have a 42% chance of dying from it! The two are mutually exclusive because there is not any cause that point to race. Or that Type A blood has a higher risk factor!! Come on – show some cause and effect behind this. All that you can say is that of those who died or became diseased, there was a higher percentage who were type A blood than the others. Statistics don’t lie – statisticians do, and this type of presentation is no better than main stream media.
We need to be advising Americans how to boost their immune systems to prevent COVID-19 rather than just teaching good hygiene and stay at home. Please share with the public the importance of good nutrition and exercise and keeping up mental health.
This is a waste of time. Congress will not fund studies of natural ways of preventing anything. They want expensive mandated drugs to be used even though some may harm you. They are even blocking INEXPENSIVE readily available old drugs for this virus. Nice try, but I’ll try to take individual precautionary measures.
STOP pandering to Pharmaceuticals… IF YOU really want to SAVE LIVES – dont you think (do you ever think – or is it a matter of pleasing Pharma Corps?) it would better SERVE THE PEOPLE by trying Traditional, Natural solutions…. THEY EXIST. Drugs are NOT always the answer or the solution…
Brainwashed or in collusion with Pharmaceuticals. TRY it, it is BETTER than the protocols that you are using… which KILLS ppl (respiration machines, pharmaceuticals that maim/kill/weaken AND have terrible side affects). The methods/protocols that are being used are: Abusive – against Medical Practice: DO NO HARM.
So, the question is: ARE YOU interested in SAVING LIVES or pleasing the pharmaceutical corps? If the answer is saving lives – USE TRADITIONAL/natural treatments.
We as citizens are requesting Congress to fund studies of natural ways of preventing COVID-19 infection. Please, please support prevention.
Dear NIH director and Dear congresswoman / congressman, please take note of the research ANH-USA did and fund studies of natural ways to prevent from COVID-19 infection.
Thank you so much.
Best regards,
Gerrit Bronkhorst
Pharmaceuticals are not the answer to everything. Nature almost always is.
Someone check if those dying from covd19 had their flu shots. They were designed to activate whatever they put into covid 19.
Read Kennedy information
A reply to Barb about flu shots. You are dead on correct. I believe everyone who has taken any of the flu shots which are different each year, are setting themselves up for getting the Covid 19. Most likely it attaches to people who have taken these shots religiously which means it will find you. Covid 19 is most likely to have all of the manufactured flues with in it.
The media has openly stated that there are no real mainstream drug solutions for COVID 19 illness. Yet, the mainstream media also calls natural support of immunity and body systems, “snake poison” to stay away from. They claim, errantly, that there is no science in natural medicine. This is simply not true. All that those opposed to natural medicine have to do, Is to go to pubmed.gov, the government medical database, to see studies aplenty. These dynamics create suspicion and distrust, and rightfully so.
PLEASE NOTE: Side effects from mainstream pharmaceuticals are written on throw-away pamphlets. Some of them can be quite severe, potentially, and far worse than any side effects from natural medicine, which are rare to begin with. Further, please note that many people may have medical vulnerabilities rendering them unable to tolerate mainstream therapy. Naturopathics are a vital necessity.
To come up against human freedom to choose, is a mockery for democracy. People must be free to choose, and free to Just Say No To Drugs…BIg Pharma’s Drugs and Vaccines, wherever they wish to, and wherever they may also very much need to, depending on individualized considerations, for their own medical wellbeing.