I believe there's been a misunderstanding where people think COVID is more dangerous to elderly people because they just tend to be generically vulnerable to a lot of disease.
That's not the case, however. If you compare death rates within different age groups, the risk for elderly is dramatically higher, even in comparison to other diseases that tend to be worse in old age (yes, exactly, such as the flu).
Even though it's less dangerous for young people, there's still reports that it was the top cause of death for people in their 20s or 30s this summer. The absolute numbers aren't that high, but it turns out people in their 20s and 30s don't die randomly that often either.
It also depends on how one defines danger. Would you rather die a few years earlier in your old age? Or live with reduced lung capacity for many years? And how common is that with COVID19?
We're still waiting to see the fall-out of long COVID.
You say this now but if we ask you then, the day of your death, would you rather die now or live a few more years in a diminished capacity, you might have a very different answer.
If you told anyone, on their death bed, "if you had run 25 km a week since [n-15 years] you would have been able to move better / dance with pretty girls / play [tennis | golf | etc] until two years ago," I think most people would say WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME.
I believe there's been a misunderstanding where people think COVID is more dangerous to elderly people because they just tend to be generically vulnerable to a lot of disease.
That's not the case, however. If you compare death rates within different age groups, the risk for elderly is dramatically higher, even in comparison to other diseases that tend to be worse in old age (yes, exactly, such as the flu).