Stephen Fry says Sweden's streets are 70% less busy and it's not dodging economic fallout

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. I honestly suspect that there may well be a lot more underlying health issues

in those young people than we know about. It's really hard to know, since we aren't going to learn the details of anyone's health history. But it's shocking to realize how many people do have underlying health issues, including chronic diseases of various kinds, genetic defects of one sort or another. An awful lot of people are alive today that would have died a hundred years ago.

Heck, I'm one of those in that both of my sons were born by emergency C-section. The first because I had a complete placenta previa, meaning the placenta totally blocked my cervix. Before modern surgery I would have bled to death before the baby could have been born. The second time I had a placental abruption, meaning the placenta was pulling away from the uterine wall, and again, in an earlier era I would have bled to death before the baby could have been born. Obviously, I'm very grateful to modern medicine that I and my two sons could live. And that's not something that made any difference to their survival, health, or well-being once they were born. Other kinds of conditions are different.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do cesareans on women like me, or that we shouldn't do any of the many life-saving things we currently do. But there is a price to be paid, and it may be that Covid-19 is the payback.

Here's something else that may be influencing this. Most people don't get enough sleep. And studies have shown that lack of sleep has a clear, negative impact on the immune system. So someone who seems healthy, but is skating by on minimal sleep may well get a whole lot sicker from this than the person who regularly gets sufficient shut-eye. I'm convinced that among the reasons I'm as incredibly healthy as I am is that most of my life I've gotten enough sleep.