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There doesn't seem to be statistics about how an enthicity affects the virus spread and severity. From reported cases it looks like certain communities are mor
by takeda 7y ago
There doesn't seem to be statistics about how an enthicity affects the virus spread and severity.
From reported cases it looks like certain communities are more endangered than others.
- IAmEveryone 7y agoFrom reported cases it looks like it started in Asia, and also that you are peddling last week’s racist conspiracy theories.
- speedgoose 7y agoDon't you know it's not good to be racist? That it's bad? That we shouldn't discriminate racially, it's bad. Judging people on their religion is bad. It's bad to judge people by their skin color, their social background, or their nationality.
- blowski 7y agoMy first reaction was to think "gosh that's a bit racist". Then I remembered that people of African or Indian origin are more susceptible to sickle cell anaemia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle_cell_disease#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle_cell_disease#Epidemiolo...], so perhaps it's not after all. I have zero medical expertise in any area, so I have no idea, but I don't think it's without merit as a question. I appreciate it could be used as a stick by racist people, though.
- speedgoose 7y agoI tried to quote a classic French movie but the comedy may have been lost in translation. Anyway, if you don't want to sound racist, you can say ethnicity or ethnic group.
- takeda 7y agothx, fixed it. Edit: English is not my native language, and after reading up about race vs ethnicity, I think the word race was correct here. Ethnicity we can derive from the countries themselves although that could be messed up by tourists. I can no longer edit my post, but showing both would be useful.
- jshevek 7y agoI respect the humility you demonstrated when accepting a correction, even if the correction was itself incorrect.
- speedgoose 7y agoWe disagree but that's okay.
- blowski 7y agoAh sorry, the quote was totally lost on me. I'm afraid my knowledge of classic French movies is very limited.
- speedgoose 7y agoSometimes I forget that France isn't winning culturally.
- Izkata 7y agoAt least in the US, "race" and "ethnicity" are two different things. Both are valid, and "race" is the one that matters here.
- jshevek 7y agoYou are correct, but notice the attempt to police speech with a rather vile insinuation: "if you don't want to sound racist"
- Izkata 7y agoHeh, it's been thrown around so much the past few years it just doesn't register with me anymore.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThat's US, though. AFAIK, "ethnicity" is what matters anywhere else in the world.
- ambicapter 7y agoWhich movie?
- speedgoose 7y agoLa classe américaine. http://cyclim.se/ http://cyclim.se/
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y agoSickle-cell anemia is heritable, not transmitted. The interesting thing is that they're less susceptible to malaria, because sickle-cell anemia has protective effects against it. And malaria is a transmissible disease.
- rovolo 7y agoI don't think that your example of Sickle Cell (SCD) is a good comparison to the original quote: > how an ethnicity affects the virus spread and severity … certain communities are more endangered than others. SCD is a genetic disease. It is prevalent in specific regions where malaria is common because SCD protects against malaria. There aren't a suite of genes which make people more susceptible to SCD, there's a single inherited gene which causes SCD. You can't catch SCD from another person unless you inherited their genes. COVID-19 is a flu virus transmitted from person to person. There's no single gene which makes people more likely to catch or transmit flu. There may be multiple genes which increase susceptibility, but once you start talking about a suite of genetics, ethnicity essentially stops being a factor. (Unless those genes directly influence a survival trait for the local area, such as skin color.) There is too much genetic variation within ethnic groups compared to global variation to single out any groups due to genetics.
- blowski 7y agoThanks for the extra detail. The reason I'd even heard of it is because my wife was tested for it while pregnant, because she has some African ancestry. It's the only case I know of where that kind of racial origin affected susceptibility to any kind of condition. Do you know if there are any known patterns for certain groups having different levels of protection against respiratory viruses? I'm trying to phrase this carefully, as I'm genuinely interested, and don't want to come off as some Infowars-style nutjob.
- takeda 7y agoThis has nothing to do with being racist, unless it's racist to acknowledge that we do have different genetic material. The more we know the better we can protect ourselves. For example why Russia has so few cases, when they are sharing border with China? I read somewhere that Asian males have large number of receptors that the virus uses to infect, but I consider this unreliable given that from other sources we still don't exactly know how the virus spreads.
- strbean 7y ago> For example why Russia has so few cases, when they are sharing border with China? The shared border of Russia and China is barely populated and thousands of miles from the epicenter of the pandemic in China.
- jshevek 7y ago>Don't you know it's not good to be racist? That it's bad? That we shouldn't discriminate racially, it's bad. Judging people on their religion is bad. It's bad to judge people by their skin color, their social background, or their nationality. Evaluating the impact that race-specific genetics may or may not have on a disease is not "judging" anyone. We are still in the early days of understanding this disease, with many unanswered questions, but eventually information like this could be helpful to improving our models and predictions. Edit: you explained elsewhere that this is an attempt at humor by quoting a French movie. While I prefer more serious content on HN, I understand others may disagree. At the very least, would you please make it clear when you are quoting?
- speedgoose 7y agoUsing the word "race" is deprecated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)
- jshevek 7y agoLanguage is defined by usage, and it's obvious that neither the words "race" nor "racist" are deprecated.
- speedgoose 7y agoYes some part of the world still use this term, like some still use body parts to measure lengths, but we should not continue to be racist because of them. You can read the Wikipedia article, there is no good point of using race in science today.
- jshevek 7y ago>we should not continue to be racist because of them. Who is being racist, and how are they being racist?
- 7y ago
- rsynnott 7y ago> From reported cases it looks like certain communities are more endangered than others. Italians? I mean, this particular conspiracy theory never seemed at all plausible, but it seems particularly non-plausible _now_.
- takeda 7y agoItalians have custom to kiss when greeting people, that can increase the spread.
- rsynnott 7y ago_Is_ kissing people you don't know a thing in Northern Italy? I'd associate it more with France.
- usrusr 7y agoAs far as I know Italy also has a hospital culture that is extremely open, e.g. it is common for patients (non-ICU I guess) to get home-cooked meals brought by friends and family instead of having a hospital meal. That means that if there is community spread, the very weakest of the elderly, those already hospitalized, will be more exposed than in countries where hospital visits are less common. An extremely cynical view would be that this increases deaths early on but frees up valuable beds for the peak of the wave. (It's painful to just write this)
- UncleOxidant 7y agoItaly has the second oldest (on average) population after Japan. I saw a statistic today that said that the average age of Italian victims is currently 81.