That Pre-Existing Condition News

The other piece of news we got today is that data from New York City, through April 1, showed that most people who died of COVID-19 had some sort of pre-existing condition.†

Note that this is pretty much exactly what I clued you in to about a month ago. Simpson's Paradox is about the naive conclusions drawn from univariate statistics — like COVID-19 is a disease of the old, or African-Americans are more susceptible — that people make on the basis of their mental models (or statistically limited models).

COVID-19 is not a disease of the old. It's a disease of the sick, who are commonly old.

COVID-19 is not a disease of African-Americans. It's a disease of the sick, who are commonly from disadvantaged circumstances.

COVID-19 is a disease of the sick. Which actually, is pretty much like all the other infectious diseases out there that don't kill you outright and quickly. Ebola is probably not a disease of the sick because it's so effective at killing the healthy. That's why it's so scary. COVID-19 is tamer.

† BTW, the country should have a collective "Duh" moment about this. If pre-existing conditions are so important for COVID-19 mortality, then they should be really important for health insurers. But that's exactly what health insurers have been telling politicians and healthcare advocates for the last 10 years: insuring people with pre-existing conditions is really expensive. Do note that I am not saying that a national healthcare policy should cut those people loose. But I am absolutely saying that politicians and advocates who brush off pre-existing conditions as some meanness or profitability issue on the part of insurance companies ... are probably lying to our faces.