Joe Biden has COVID. Here’s what someone over 80 can expect

By Hassan Vally, Deakin University

If US politics leading up to the 2024 presidential election was a Hollywood thriller, it would be a movie full of plot twists and surprises. The latest twist is President Joe Biden has COVID and is isolating at home.

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Biden’s doctor says his symptoms are mild and include a runny nose, cough and generally feeling unwell. His temperature, oxygen levels and respiratory rate are said to be normal.

Biden, who has been diagnosed with COVID twice before, has received his COVID vaccine and booster shots, and has taken the first dose of the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

No doubt, Biden will be receiving the best of medical care. Yet, as much recent media coverage reminds us, he is 81 years old.

So let’s look at what it means for an 81-year-old man to have COVID in 2024. Of course, Biden is not just any man, but we’ll come to that later.

Luckily, it’s not 2020

If we were back in 2020, a COVID diagnosis at this age would have been a big deal.

This was a time before COVID vaccines, before specific COVID treatments and before we knew as much about COVID as we do today. Back then, being over 80 and being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the virus that causes COVID) represented a significant threat to your health.

It was very clear early in the pandemic that your chances of getting severe disease and dying increased with age. The early data suggested that if you were over 80 and infected, you had about a 15% likelihood of dying from the illness.

Also, if you did develop severe disease, we didn’t have a lot in the toolkit to deal with your infection.

Remember, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson ended up in the ICU with his COVID infection in April 2020, despite being 55 at the time. That’s a much younger age than Biden is now.

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