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Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo
Speaking of COVID-19, has this reached any of Indigenous community? I wonder if they are very susceptible to this compared to the rest of us?
Is there any information about this at all?
In the USA it appears to heavily effect their African American population but I'm not sure if that's because of low socioeconomic group, underlying health issues and their terrible healthcare system.
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I haven't done a proper analysis but my eyeball average says it's not race specific. If you look at rates my race across the world there are no standouts IMO. Other people have been speculating on this since the start. To clarify:
If you look at middle class populations of, for example, African descent, their infection and death rates mirror other populations of similar economic in that jurisdiction, Same goes for asian, working class etc.
It LOOKS to me (again no extensive analysis) like the biggest risk factor is geography/jurisdiction, population density, cultural factors like socialization and touching. The virus seems to be highly contagious with a specific transmission mechanism, so the big issue is the initial exposure. In some places you are much more likely to be exposed.
Once you are infected then the stated health aspects seem to drive outcomes. Basically some types of people are less likely to develop severe symptoms and need hospitalisation and die. This seems overwhelmingly to be driven by good/bad health.
The over representation of AAs in the USA seems driven by more exposure, hence higher infection rate, and soc/ec factors driving lower health resulting in more severe outcomes.
I haven't worded some of that well, sorry. It probably ain't genetics (eugenics?)...how about that.
I've been pretty frazzled this last week or so but things seem to be calming down. If I can find a comprehensive data set and a little time I'll build a spreadsheet and do some graphs of individual US states and EU countries. It will be useful to quash the media hype about how terribly the USA is doing but also may prove interesting in determining driving factors if we look at the different societies and policies.
I am a little scared though ATM at how well it's tracking 1918, if that continues September and on is going to be a deeply unhappy time. It's like the virus is conning us into complacency getting ready for it's main assault...