I came across a study indicating that Americans overestimate the proportion of covid-19 deaths for young people by an enormous amount (around a factor of 40).
The question is why? One answer might be that a young victim is newsworthy and may get a write up while an older victim may not. However, looking at some data from the Louisiana Department of Health, I came across another possibility. It has to do with how we represent the data in charts. They have cases and deaths by age on the same chart. As you can see, all the death numbers look quite small, to the point that when looking at the chart, visually the difference between 4 deaths for 0-18 is barely distinguishable from 75 deaths for ages 30-39. ›
https://ldh.la.gov/Coronavirus/
The reality is that in Louisiana over 3,000 people over 70 have died of covid-19, while only 4 people under 18 have. That is a ratio of over 750! Combine that with the fact that Louisiana has approximately 27% of its population under 18 and only about 9% over 70. The overall covid-19 death rate for those under 18 is more than 2000 times lower than that of those over 70! This compares to people’s misperception that only about 5 times as many people over 65 have died as those under 25.
Here is the relevant chart comparing people’s beliefs to actual deaths:
Even the above chart I think understates the difference. Below is a chart of covid-19 deaths by age in Louisiana. I stretched the y axis until the deaths of those under 18 are actually visible on the chart. You will likely have to scroll for a while to get to the bottom.
If I had accounted for the number of people in each age range, you would have scrolled for three times as long, since there are about three times as many people under the age of 18 in Louisiana as over 70.
