[HN Gopher] Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa's Low Death ...
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Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa's Low Death Rates
Author : ElectronShak
Score : 17 points
Date : 2022-03-23 18:33 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| maxwell wrote:
| No mention of APOC vs. non-APOC countries:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33795896
| jdhn wrote:
| What is APOC?
| yesfitz wrote:
| African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control
| joshvm wrote:
| I think it's meant to be APAC - Asia PACific.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| I think this is the most relevant passage in the article:
|
| >Some speculation has focused on the relative youth of Africans.
| Their median age is 19 years, compared with 43 in Europe and 38
| in the United States. Nearly two-thirds of the population in sub-
| Saharan Africa is under 25, and only 3 percent is 65 or older.
| That means far fewer people, comparatively, have lived long
| enough to develop the health issues (cardiovascular disease,
| diabetes, chronic respiratory disease and cancer) that can
| sharply increase the risk of severe disease and death from Covid.
| Young people infected by the coronavirus are often asymptomatic,
| which could account for the low number of reported cases.
|
| A disease that overwhelming kills the elderly is not going to
| have a comparable impact on a society where only 3% of the
| population is over 65. This is especially true when you note that
| obesity rates in Sub-saharan Africa (with South Africa a notable
| outlier) are much lower than in "developed" countries that have
| been hit harder by Covid.
| maxwell wrote:
| Did you stop reading?
|
| Two paragraphs later:
|
| > Since Covid tore through South and Southeast Asia last year,
| it has become harder to accept these theories. After all, the
| population of India is young, too (with a median age of 28),
| and temperatures in the country are also relatively high. But
| researchers have found that the Delta variant caused millions
| of deaths in India, far more than the 400,000 officially
| reported. And rates of infection with malaria and other
| coronaviruses are high in places, including India, that have
| also seen high Covid fatality rates.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >India, with 41 million obese people, ranks third after the
| US and China in having the highest number of overweight
| people in the world, says a study.
|
| Young, thin people have an extremely low covid mortality
| rate. Young, obese people have a much higher morality rate.
|
| >In a study of COVID-19 cases in patients aged 18 years and
| younger, having obesity was associated with a 3.07 times
| higher risk of hospitalization and a 1.42 times higher risk
| of severe illness (intensive care unit admission, invasive
| mechanical ventilation, or death) when hospitalized.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html
|
| Look at a map that shows age and obesity, then overlay that
| map with the severity of Covid outcomes and you will see a
| very close correlation.
| sharken wrote:
| So given the facts about obesity in India (high) vs.
| obesity in Africa (low) and the median age, I'd say that
| there is no mystery.
|
| Three risk factors for Corona are Obesity, other
| comorbidities and age, the rest of the factors are pretty
| much insignificant.
|
| The best way to protect yourself is the Pfizer or Moderna
| vaccine, which is what people in any of the three groups
| should do.
| morsch wrote:
| Median age of 28, so pretty much half-way between Africa and
| EU/US. The percentage of population >50 or 60 would be
| interesting, too, since that's the inspection point where the
| fatality really ramps up.
| stolenmerch wrote:
| I suppose the first thing that _might_ come to mind is the
| correlation between obesity and serious disease outcome. "Pooled
| analysis show individuals with obesity were more at risk for
| COVID-19, >46% higher for hospitalization. >113% higher for ICU,
| 48% increase in death... The underlying metabolic and
| inflammatory factors of individuals with obesity also play a
| considerable role in the manifestation of severe lung diseases.
| [0] Given that only about 20% of sub-Saharan Africa is overweight
| compared to nearly 70% of North America [1], I might consider
| this one factor.
|
| [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/obr.13128
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/obesity
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Obesity is always been one of the main factors in COVID
| mortality. Really any mortality, for almost every illness being
| overweight complicates things.
|
| However, it's taboo to outright say that. The Huffington Post
| runs a regular, "You can be morbidly obese and be perfectly
| healthy "article. I used to be well over 300 lb, and even now
| losing weight is one of my primary concerns ( I hover around
| 240, although when I slack off I'm at 250 again).
| rkk3 wrote:
| Even if you are morbidly obese from muscle (who are we
| kidding) that excess weight is still putting unhealthy
| additional stress on all of your organs
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