So, mere hours after announcing that only the emergence of some medical problem would make him drop out of the presidential race, US President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID. But how worried should he and his supporters be? 

Is this the end of his campaign? Or just a week with the sniffles? The answer depends on a few important factors.

Biden is old

There’s no getting away from it: Joe Biden is old. At 81, he has outlived all but 3.4 percent of the US population; to put it another way, you could pick 300 people at random from across the country and you still wouldn’t have enough folks older than Joe to fill a geriatric football team.

Why is that relevant? Well, as anybody who remembers the first waves of COVID-19 no doubt recalls, age is a big factor in how well your body handles the virus. 

“The early data suggested that if you were over 80 and infected, you had about a 15 percent likelihood of dying from the illness,” noted Hassan Vally, an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Deakin University, in an article for The Conversation.

“Remember, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson ended up in the ICU with his COVID infection in April 2020, despite being 55 at the time. That’s a much younger age than Biden is now,” he explained. “Former US President Donald Trump also had what was understood to be a very severe case of COVID in October 2020. He was 74 at the time.”

Even today, with four years’ worth of vaccines, booster shots, and virus mutations behind us, older people have a much higher risk than the young from a COVID infection: according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those over the age of 75 are about 22 times more likely than people aged 18-49 to be hospitalized by a COVID infection, and 200 times more likely to die from it.

Such comparisons rarely tell the whole story, however. After all…

It’s not 2020 anymore

Let’s dig into those statistics a little further. Having a 200 times increase in the likelihood of death sounds very scary indeed – but in fact, it really only equates to a one in 25,000 chance. That’s much lower than the numbers we were seeing in 2020 – less than 1/40th the number of deaths, in fact – and it’s not the only factor playing in Biden’s favor after four years of the pandemic.

“COVID is still a disease that needs to be taken seriously,” Vally said – but “the threat COVID poses to an individual is far less now than it has ever been.”

Most of us have some immunity to the virus now, he pointed out, whether from vaccinations or prior infection – and Biden is known to have had both. He’s up to date on his booster shots, per the White House, which is particularly recommended for older groups to negate waning immune abilities.

Plus, current strains of COVID may be less dangerous than the OG variants. The two currently making headlines, FLiRT and LB.1, are fairly similar to JN.1 – the strain that was previously dominant in the US. That could be good news for Biden (and anybody else who contracts it) according to Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist Scott Roberts: “while JN.1 occurred during the winter months, when people gather indoors and the virus is more likely to spread, its symptoms were milder than those caused by variants in the early years of the pandemic,” he pointed out last week.

Biden says he feels okay

All these statistics notwithstanding, there’s one piece of information that we can’t overlook: the President, as far as any of us know, is not feeling too bad right now.

His symptoms are mild: he “presented […] with upper respiratory symptoms, to include rhinorhea (runny nose) and non-productive cough, with general malaise,” per his doctor. And his general health seems to be stable, too: “His symptoms remain mild, his respiratory rate is normal at 16, his temperature is normal at 97.8 and his pulse oximetry is normal at 97 percent,” the statement continues.

Biden is also in remarkable shape for a person of his age. According to his most recent public health summary, he is being treated for obstructive sleep apnea, high cholesterol, and atrial fibrillation – but none of those are conditions known to increase the risk from a COVID infection.

In fact there’s only really one illness he’s known to have had which may be a problem.

This is not Biden’s first infection – and that may be concerning

We know, we know: we already said this was a good thing. Previous infections means natural immunity, right? Well, yes – but it’s not all good news. 

While repeat infections do seem to lead to milder symptoms – and, in turn, milder symptoms tend to be associated with a lower risk of long COVID – overall, becoming infected multiple times can increase your risk of the disease lingering. 

One paper looking at data from older male patients – a group that Biden fits into pretty well – found that contracting two or more COVID infections resulted in being three times more likely to develop lung and heart issues, and more than 1.5 times as likely to have a neurological disorder such as brain fog or even strokes.

Indeed, the risk of repeat infections is often compared to Russian roulette, with no clear consensus on how dangerous it may or may not be. 

“Reinfection is very contentious,” Fikadu Tafesse, a virologist at Oregon Health & Science University, told the New York Times last year. “Literally depending on which paper you are reading, there’s contradicting information regarding that. So I don’t know what to believe.”

Should that be concerning to the President? Perhaps – though he does have something pretty important going for him that may cancel it out.

Biden has access to the best care

Even the most ardent supporters of the American healthcare system would admit that – how can we put this – its efficacy scales with net worth. Basically, if you’re rich, you’re much less likely to die.

And Biden isn’t just rich – he’s the goddamn President. He has his own doctor on-call, and access to the best medicine we know of to fight his infection.

It’s been confirmed already, for example, that he’s taking Paxlovid – an antiviral medicine that has been shown to reduce the likelihood of severe illness or death from COVID by up to 89 percent if taken shortly after symptoms begin. 

But the list price for a full regimen of the drug was recently increased by Pfizer to almost $1,400 without insurance – and even though there are currently ways around that for most ordinary Americans, it’s clear that being rich as Croesus has its advantages.

“If his symptoms were to become more severe or any complications were to develop, you can be assured he would get the best treatment,” Vally pointed out.

“So is Biden’s diagnosis news? Well of course, given all the speculation about his health,” he concluded. “But in terms of COVID being a major threat to Biden’s health, there are no indications it should be.”