Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
People over 75 are 1,000 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than teenagers
COVID-19 | Public Sector | North America
February 15, 2021 – Older Americans are shockingly vulnerable to the pandemic. The implication is clear: shield the elderly. Until vaccines are widely deployed, we should consider protecting those at high risk, even if this means isolation. The arrival of safe, effective vaccines makes the pain of that isolation a time-bound problem.
To read the article, see “America 2021: Building a bridge to normalcy,” February 15, 2021.
Interactive
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Visual form
Step-through age-band icon-array sequence.
Layout / body structure
The presents one age group at a time with Prev and Next controls and a page counter, pairing the age label on the left with a large field of tiny human icons or simplified figures in the middle. Reader steps through the age bands sequentially and compares how the highlighted mortality share expands from nearly invisible in younger groups to large visible figures in the oldest group.
What is being compared
It compares the chance that a person who catches COVID-19 will die across age groups, ranging from children and teenagers to adults over 85. The interaction turns the comparison into a progression from low-risk age bands to very high-risk age bands.
Measurement system
The measure is odds expressed as one death per number of infected people in each age group. Each screen prints the age band and a one-in-x figure, with the icon array visually reinforcing how rare or common the fatal outcome is for that group.
Visible structure inside the graphic
Younger age-group screens use huge grids of tiny pale icons with only one blue figure highlighted, while the oldest screen abandons the dense grid and shows a small set of large human figures with one blue figure among them. The shift in icon scale is itself part of the message, because it makes the risk jump feel dramatically larger by the end of the sequence.
Main takeaway from the visual
Fatality risk rises enormously with age. The youngest groups are represented by enormous fields of mostly pale icons, but by the oldest group the graphic compresses to only a handful of figures, making the mortality risk feel orders of magnitude higher rather than merely somewhat worse.
Key standout values or extremes
The 0 to 4 years panel shows just 1 in 4,686, the 5 to 17 years panel shows 1 in 9,259, and the 18 to 29 years panel still shows only 1 in 2,755. At the opposite extreme, the 85 years and older panel shows 1 in 5, which is visually and numerically far above the younger-group screens and consistent with the headline claim that people over 75 are roughly a thousand times more likely to die than teenagers.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
This page uses a step-through sequence. The viewer can move age band by age band with Prev and Next, and the page counter shows that the captured younger-child and oldest-age views are different screens within the same sequence.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.