That is true, but although you'll see reports of ultra fit 80 year olds, they're the exception, rather than the rule.
About 30% of them will have a reasonably serious CVD
The majority will be hypertensive
10%+ will be diabetic
10%+ will have COPD
10%+ will be asthmatic
15%+ will have kidney disease
10%+ will recently have had a cancer
Obviously some will have multiple conditions
Source for the above numbers is
here
The point of all that is that someone who's 80+ is very likely to have an underlying condition which makes them high risk. It also means that the average life expectancy of someone that age is brought down accordingly.
Simple maths for you. Say half of 80 year olds have one or more things wrong with them. If 60% of that group is likely to die in six months anyway then you'd expect to see at least 30% of 80 year olds die, year in, year out.
According to the last census, there were about 1.8 million in the 80 to 84 age group, so you'd expect about half a million people in that age group to die every year.
In reality the total number of people
of all ages dying is ~550k a year, so either my analysis is fundamentally flawed ( which is possible ), or the article you read was fundamentally flawed, or both.
If you link up the article, I might get round to looking at it, but I'll likely forget about it, so I ain't promising. Don't believe everything you read, which obviously includes my posts.
www.healthmarkets.com
