(WBBM NEWSRADIO) – The COVID-19 pandemic hit people aged 35-44 harder in its second year than the first, new research indicates.
Sheldon Jacobson, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois, said the higher mortality rate for this age group in 2021 suggests members shied away from social distancing and vaccines as the Delta variant was on the rise.
People in the age group were 10 to 12 % more likely to die in the second year of the pandemic compared to 2020.
“The people in the middle years – the 20s, 30s and 40s – did not die as aggressively in the first year as maybe they could have. But they did not take the precautions, and the second year was even worse than the first,” he tells WBBM Newsradio.
He said people in general have a hard time assessing personal risk.
“Most people would be more frightened getting onto an airplane than getting into their car, yet getting into their car is a much riskier proposition than getting onto an airplane,” Jacobson said. “And the same thing comes with the precautions against COVID-19.”
More information about the data can be found here.
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