2020, Andrew Levin, "The Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19"

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a particularly heavy toll on the elderly in the United States and other nations, leading to calls to target lock-down policies and other pandemic responses to this group. The age profile of the infection fatality rate (IFR) for COVID-19 is a critical input in designing such policies. Andrew Levin and his collaborators have combined data from a number of studies that measure the prevalence of COIVD-19 in various populations with data on COVID-19 fatalities to estimate age-specific IFRs (27597). Their estimates suggest very low IFRs at younger ages, and sharply-rising values at older ages: 1.3% at age 65 and 14% at age 85. Levin summarizes the findings in the short video above.