Ben Lowry: Older people face a greatly increased Covid risk, yet few of them want to be locked up so there is no easy way to protection

We have known for almost two months that the median age of someone who dies with it is over 80.

We have also known, from both the Office for National Satistics (ONS) in the UK and from the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States, that 90% of people who die have co-morbidities (other health conditions). In fact many of the people who die have had multiple other conditions.

The risk to children is miniscule.

The ONS table of the first 33,000 deaths in England and Wales showed that only two of them were children aged up to 14.

Some 25 who died were 15 to 24.

The great majority of the dead, 24,000, were aged over 75.

This means that a child aged up to 14 is far more likely to be killed in a car crash than from coronavirus.

I know a bit about this because I have written about road death statistics for 20 years.

In the last decade, on average around 60 people aged 0 - 14 died on UK roads per year. That is a big improvement on past decades when hundreds of children died per year.

The 33,000 Covid deaths tallied by the ONS are deaths to the start of May, by when it is estimated that around 5% of the population had been infected (3.5 million out of 70m). Some experts think far more people in the UK had been infected by then but even if it is only 5%, and even if the infection level increased 20 fold to 100%, then the number of children who might die would be about 40, still below road deaths.

In other words, if we lost control of Covid and each person in the UK got it a child would still be more at risk in a car.

And even if the death toll from Covid was to increase 20-fold (in that worst case scenario of only 5% having been infected to date and 100% ultimately becoming so), the death toll among young people aged 15 to 24 would rise to 500 deaths.

Even that very unlikely scenario would be only slightly higher than the annual UK road death toll of around 400 deaths for 15 to 24 year olds (who are the most dangerous road users and are far more likely to be killed than young children).

Given the tiny risk to pupils, I think schools should barely have closed (except for an extended Easter break). They should reopen at once, given the obvious damage to children’s education. Teachers would face some risk but so do store workers, who are far less well paid.

People under 30 should get free movement, so they can get jobs.

But older people are far, far more likely to die of Covid-19 than in a car crash. In fact using similarly basic calculations, they are at least 100 times more likely to die of the virus.

Around 500 people aged over 60 die on the roads in the UK each year now, while 28,000 of the 33,000 ONS recorded deaths were people over 60. That number would easily be 50,000+ (100 x the 500 road deaths) if Covid infected all the UK (in fact it would be hundreds of thousands of deaths, so much more than x100).

Therefore, obviously, old people are highly vulnerable if they get infected. We knew that early in the crisis, and know it all the more now.

Like most people, I have been worried above all for the welfare of older people I know and wondered how to ensure they do not get infected. But the obvious solution – confining them inside for months or years – is not feasible.

My elderly relatives were previously active, and find the restrictions hard. They miss their grandchildren.

A friend of mine said her father, aged 80+ and active before lockdown, told her that he feared his capacity for walking was now diminished.

Another friend said that his dad, also 80s and also formerly active, was now sleeping more during the day.

This a both a health problem and also a major moral dilemma.

If old people were to mix freely they would be at grave risk of infection and death. If they stay cooped up, it might cause serious harm.

Do we have the right to imprison people for their own safety?

There is no easy answer.

To use the road death analogy again, the biggest factor in cutting road fatalities was brought about by compulsion: seat belt use.

Most nations now enforce them on grounds that they have a right to reduce the emotional, health and financial cost of road accidents.

But forcing people to stay home in the last years of their lives is much more of a restraint than wearing a seat belt for a car trip.

How we balance the wellbeing of older folk with their freedom, including freedom to take risk, is one of the trickiest challenges ahead.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

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