I saw the underlying conditions part, not the dead in the next year part. I wish there was a list of such underlying conditions, just because lots of people live with things that could be considered underlying conditions, some that are mostly manageable but for such a situation.
I get what you are saying but I'll give you two examples:
First, the 85 year old that I mentioned above. I know he had at least two prior cancer episodes. I don't know all of his health information. I keyed what I knew and some decent guesses into John Hancock's Life Expectancy Calculator and got "86 years" as his life expectancy. That is one year older than the 85 that he was when he got COVID-19. Ie, COVID cost him ~1 year of life.
Second, my dad. My dad is 79. He has hearth disease (multiple prior attacks, multiple stents, etc) and he has advanced dementia. I hope COVID-19 doesn't get him. I have he and my mom staying in their house and I'm dropping off groceries and prescriptions for them. I'm doing everything I can to keep them alive. That said, if COVID-19 does get my dad, it isn't going to take, actuarially, more than a year or two away from him. His age and co-morbidity factors realistically have already set that in stone.
A note on statistics:
On a one-to-one basis this is all poppycock. In the absence of COVID-19 Chuck (the 85 year old I know who died of COVID-19) might have lived to 100 or he might have died of heart failure today instead of COVID-19 four days ago. Same for my dad. If he avoids COVID-19 he might die tomorrow or live to 100. On an individual basis we can't know. However, on a large-scale we can predict these things very accurately. If you group together 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people in similar situations to Chuck or in similar situations to my dad you can predict with VERY high accuracy that:
- x% will die within six months and
- y% will die in 6-12 months and
- z% will die in 1-2 years and
- a% will die in 2-4 years and
- b% will die in 4-6 years and
- c% will die in 6-10 years and
- d % will live more than 10 years