5 ms·

> And black people are disproportionately impacted by COVID. Isn't Africa doing surprisingly well?

• eganist 6y ago
  > Isn't Africa doing surprisingly well? Yeah, so this is a notable bit of nuance. Black people in Africa likely tend to get a bit more sun exposure compared to Black people in northern territories e.g. Europe, US, etc., so it wouldn't surprise me if Vitamin D deficiencies among Black people in the US and Europe are much more prevalent. https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2019/09/24/african-americans-at-greatest-risk-of-vitamin-d-deficiency https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2019/09/24/african-americans... Wouldn't surprise me if the same is true in southern India or other territories where melanin (genetic or otherwise) tracks with sun exposure.
• samatman 6y ago
  It's not that surprising. Africa has dramatically lower rates of obesity, a younger population, less asthma, less air conditioning, and as a sibling comment notes, the people get more sun exposure, hence Vitamin D. Everything we know to track with high mortality, Africa has less of. They also have very little testing, so the infection rate is unknown and somewhat irrelevant, since few people are ending up in hospitals and dying.
  • mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Not much of a winter either, besides South Africa. I wonder how rates were there this last August?
    • FreekNortier 6y ago
      High. This past winter here was one of the coldest ones in more than a decade. South Africa is also the only country in Africa(south of the Sahara) that really tests.
• corprew 6y ago
  In addition to what the peer comments say, Africa has learned a lot of lessons in fighting infection disease outbreaks from fighting Ebola: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7404531/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7404531/
• filleduchaos 6y ago
  > Isn't Africa doing surprisingly well? I've always wanted to ask someone personally: why is the fact that African nations haven't been overrun by COVID-19 surprising? I mean, I live here and I'm certainly very pleased that we've had such positive outcomes. But the constant tone of surprise from foreigners was funny at first but is now mildly annoying if I'm being honest; not you, obviously, but I've read one too many op-eds that seem somewhat upset that we aren't dying in droves.
  • jobigoud 6y ago
    The unspoken assumption is that everything else being equal african countries should have been impacted at least as much as other countries, but probably more impacted for having less intensive care units per inhabitant.
    • filleduchaos 6y ago
      But everything else is not equal, is it? Ignoring material conditions is "assume a spherical cow in a vacuum" levels of bad analysis. Even at that, using intensive care unit counts as the metric worth paying attention to in a public health crisis seems rather off; public health is and should be the domain of the community, not of the hospitals. To be fair, "how likely are people to do what they're supposed to to protect their communities" is far trickier to measure than just counting hospital beds.
  • neuronic 6y ago
    AFAIK it's basically demographics. Younger, less obese overall, not stuffed with industrial trash food over decades resulting in less comorbidities. Also, if the vitamin D angle holds, Africa is probably pretty well positioned on that front. I would REALLY like to see COVID ICU numbers in regions with a significant marine/fish diet versus others. (Although, imho, nutritional science is largely opinionated guess work with no basis in reality but an incredible ability to sell books off it).
    • filleduchaos 6y ago