Promising ideas and directions for further research into biology of aging are discussed using analysis of the age-related kinetics of organisms’ mortality. It is shown that the traditional evolutionary theory explaining aging by decreasing force of natural selection with age is not consistent with the data on age-related mortality kinetics. The hypothesis of multistage destruction of organisms with age, including the rate-limiting stage of transition to a state of non-specific vulnerability (“non-survivor”), is discussed. It is found that the effect of the COVID-19 coronavirus infection on mortality is not additive (as it was the case with the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918), but multiplicative (proportional) for ages over 65 years.

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通过研究死亡率，我们可以了解有关衰老和 COVID-19 的哪些信息？


通过对生物体死亡率与年龄相关的动力学的分析，讨论了进一步研究衰老生物学的有希望的想法和方向。结果表明，传统的进化论通过自然选择的力量随年龄减弱来解释衰老，这与年龄相关的死亡率动力学数据不一致。讨论了生物体随着年龄的增长而发生多阶段破坏的假设，包括向非特定脆弱性状态（“非幸存者”）过渡的限速阶段。研究发现，对于 65 岁以上的老年人来说，COVID-19 冠状病毒感染对死亡率的影响不是相加的（如 1918 年西班牙流感疫情的情况），而是相乘的（成比例）。