from Hacker News

Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa’s Low Death Rates

by ElectronShak on 3/23/22, 6:33 PM with 26 comments

  • by stolenmerch on 3/23/22, 8:08 PM

    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

  • by moistly on 3/23/22, 11:51 PM

    No mystery: almost everywhere else has a population count that is orders of magnitude more elderly and obese. Young skinny folk don’t often die from covid, and that describes most of Africa.

  • by StanislavPetrov on 3/23/22, 7:47 PM

    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.

  • by ShiftedClock on 3/24/22, 2:39 AM

    Parasites seem to reduce mortality associated with Covid, and Africa has a high parasite burden. More research is needed, but this is a reasonably sized study (751 patients):

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34368662/

  • by Axien on 3/24/22, 8:30 PM

    I'm wondering if we will find all of the masking, and lock downs, and social distancing caused more harm than good? My uneducated theory is people in close quarters are all exposed to a light dose of the virus, thus herd immunity is created. You may have a short spike but it is quickly squelched as society as a whole build immunity. In the developed lock-down societies, herd immunity never developed. People eventually had to go out were they were exposed.

    Case in point, look at China. They are having a terrible time with Omnicron ... and they were the most locked-down society on earth during the original outbreak. Everyone else seems to be opening back up.

  • by socksset on 3/24/22, 11:25 AM

    I don't think this is rocket science.

    "The latest statistics show that 18.4% of women and 7.8% of men on the continent live with obesity "

    Couple low BMI with a much lower life expectancy so less people over 65 and I think the main variables are covered.

  • by maxwell on 3/23/22, 6:59 PM

    No mention of APOC vs. non-APOC countries:

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33795896

  • by socksset on 3/24/22, 11:21 AM

    I don't think this is rocket science.

    "The latest statistics show that 18.4% of women and 7.8% of men on the continent live with obesity "

  • by berto4 on 3/24/22, 12:55 AM

    how about this: Africans are simply healthier; given all the poverty, they're saved from the diseases of the rich which are more susceptible to covid. It's funny how all the so-called philantropist was pushing to vaccinate them nonetheless.