Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa’s Low Death Rates | Hacker News Reader

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

nytimes.com

26 pointsElectronShak26 comments

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

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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.

What about apparent diff between APOC and non-APOC countries?

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

That is another enigma, unfortunately i know too little about individual African countries to give a qualified statement.

Thanks for the info.

Not seeing any mention of obesity in the article unfortunately.

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.

That half of the population is under 20 boggles the mind.

That's the default state. It's more surprising that in most countries today there are so many people over 60, and in some so many people over 80.

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/

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.

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.

No mention of APOC vs. non-APOC countries:

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

What is APOC?

I think it's meant to be APAC - Asia PACific.

No, the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control, a WHO program funded by the Gates Foundation that ran from 1995 to 2015, distributing over 100 million doses of ivermectin to treat river blindess.

https://who.int/apoc

African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control

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 "

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.

You do realize that people get vaccinated for non-deadly diseases all the time, right?

What doesn't kill you can still put you out of work for a few weeks or longer, which can be a very serious problem for the poor.

What non-deadly diseases are Africans routinely vaccinated against, pray tell?

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