Do young people with no previous pathologies, end up admitted with bilateral pneumonia and serious breathing difficulties due Covid-19?

Question

In this link https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/347806-fuese-segunda-guerra-mundial-doctora (Spanish) which also contains the YouTube video (where she says basically all of the text mentioned in the link), posted today, hours ago, an emergency doctor Miriam Sánchez from a hospital in Spain was interviewed and this was said (emphasis mine):

However, their main concern is the high number of infections suffered by the young population of the country and that, despite not having previous pathologies, they end up admitted with bilateral pneumonia and serious breathing difficulties.

"I am concerned that this is not what I was told," says Miriam. "They had told me that it was a flu and we are seeing from day to day that this is not the case, and that it does not only affect older people."

Is that true?

Is the bold text sustained?

All the things that I've read so far is that, when one is young, healthy and\or no previous pathologies, then it won't be a complicated case i.e. no serious breathing difficulties not pneumonia nor anything like that.

Please someone clarify this situation, thanks in advance.

"High number" is not a quantifiable measure and falls to a matter of opinion, we deal with claims that are quantifiable here. — Jiminy Cricket., Mar 27 '20 at 17:53
Then how would that be a notable claim? People spontaneously develop all sorts of symptoms and conditions with no previous associated pathologies, nothing remarkable there. — Jiminy Cricket., Mar 27 '20 at 18:01
Here's one off the top of google: [Spontaneous peritonitis](https://www.hepatitisc.uw.edu/pdf/management-cirrhosis-related-complications/spontaneous-bacterial-peritonitis-recognition-management/core-concept/all.html), [pneumothorax](https://www.chop.edu/conditions-diseases/spontaneous-pneumothorax). Something like [pneumonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonia) like the others has associated risk factors (asthma, COPD, heart disease, cystic fibrosis etc.) which sometimes are not present ie. there were no previous pathologies. Margaret Thatcher's detached retina without a blow too. — Jiminy Cricket., Mar 27 '20 at 18:18
Russia Today (what RT used to be called) is not a reliable source — Aaron F, Mar 27 '20 at 18:29
Some deaths are misrecorded. In [this](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/chloe-middleton-death-21-year-old-not-recorded-nhs-covid-19-related) tragic case of a 21-year-old the **coroner** recorded the official reason as being related to Covid-19, but the hospital where she was treated disagrees. — Weather Vane, Mar 27 '20 at 18:44
@WeatherVane I've just read about it on [bbc](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-52041709) there it says, the _mother_ said "She had no underlying health conditions." In any case, it would match/make sense to the link on my question then :/ — I likeThatMeow, Mar 27 '20 at 19:01
No: my point was that Covid-19 was the *recorded* cause of death, but not the *actual* cause. It would answer a similar question about heart attacks with no related history, but here it would be a **false positive**. — Weather Vane, Mar 27 '20 at 19:06
@WeatherVane right right. The guardian link says a different thing. — I likeThatMeow, Mar 27 '20 at 19:19
"High number" could mean 1%. Without some degree of quantification the quote is not "notable", from a Skeptics viewpoint. — Daniel R Hicks, Mar 27 '20 at 20:32
@DanielRHicks fair enough but I think that whatever it is the percentage, so far I've heard of a case where the patient was young and with no previous pathologies and at some point, have died due Covid-19 — I likeThatMeow, Mar 27 '20 at 20:56
@America - Some early reports suggested that "young people" (whatever that means) would not be in any danger at all. But clearly that is not the case (I'm thinking an 18-year-old in California was one early fatality). But is the death rate of young (and otherwise healthy) people "significant" compared to the older population? No one knows -- there is no "yardstick" to measure this. — Daniel R Hicks, Mar 27 '20 at 21:00
@DanielRHicks I heard (I think on 'More or Less - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p087n42r ) that the excess mortality pretty much falls on the same line as the normal death rate by age, as far as we can tell to date. — richardb, Mar 27 '20 at 21:18
@DanielRHicks The 17-year-old is not confirmed yet "California health officials are reevaluating the death of a 17-year-old boy from coronavirus, saying his case is "complex" and needs further investigation." [cnn](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/26/health/california-teen-coronavirus-deaths/index.html) apparently with no health issues — I likeThatMeow, Mar 27 '20 at 21:19

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 28 '20 at 00:41

COVID-19 is so new that there are a lot of things that are uncertain. There is some anecdotal evidence that young people can develop significant complication. For example, this article in the Atlantic by a NYC doctor describes a number of young, healthy patients coming to the hospital with significant discomfort and in one case sever inflammation.

The New York times published the experience of a 26 year old that was admitted to the hospital due to COVID-19.

The CDC has started to compile some statistics. A recent CDC report found that nearly 20% of hospitalizations were people between 20 and 44 years old. The data doesn't make clear how many of them had underlying conditions or how many of them developed pneumonia but it certainly shows serious complications are not uncommon.

That Atlantic article is brutal, whomever is gonna read it, _stay calm_ when reading it. The 26 year old experience is more brutal. Then, we can see it makes sense to what doctor Miriam Sánchez said. So it's happening on Spain, USA, ... — I likeThatMeow, Mar 28 '20 at 02:50

Do young people with no previous pathologies, end up admitted with bilateral pneumonia and serious breathing difficulties due Covid-19?

1 Answers1