President Biden is 79 years old, and Americans over his age account for an increasing share of the people who died in Covid in recent months. The virus takes advantage of the weakened immunity caused by the long delays since the last vaccination of the elderly, and Omicron variants have evolved their ability to evade the body’s defenses.
Covid is killing far fewer Americans of all ages this summer than at the peak of the Omicron wave in winter. Still, older people are still at very high risk.
As of early June, four times as many Americans between the ages of 75 and 84 died of the virus each week compared to 20-year-olds. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.. (The CDC warned that these deaths are provisional and are based on death certificates and do not account for all deaths in these age groups.)
This is an even greater age difference than was present at the peak of the Omicron wave this winter. And the number of people aged 75-84 killed by Covid each week was twice the number of people aged 55-64.
The president received a second booster shot in late March, significantly reducing his risk of serious illness. The CDC reported that this spring, people over the age of 50 who received a single booster died of Covid four times as often as those who received two boosters.
In 2022, Covid’s deaths were always concentrated in the elderly, but since the vaccine became widely available, it has been more biased towards the elderly than at any other time. Many older people were vaccinated in early 2021, and among those who have not yet received booster shots, the immune defenses generated by the shots are significantly diminished.
In contrast, middle-aged Americans, who suffered most of the pandemic deaths last summer and fall, benefit from a greater store of immune protection from both vaccination and previous infections.
According to the latest CDC data, Covid’s mortality remains much lower than in winter, but again among the elderly as the antigenic escape Omicron submutant known as BA.5 causes more infections. Increased has. From early May to early June, the number of Americans aged 75-84 who die from Covid each week increased by nearly 50%.
