Indigenous Alaskans died from Covid-19 at nearly 3X the rate of white Alaskans | Hacker News Reader

Indigenous Alaskans died from Covid-19 at nearly 3X the rate of white Alaskans

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15 pointsDoreenMichele11 comments

> Alaska Native communities have long had some of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates in Alaska and in the U.S.

So this is despite being vaccinated more. Lede buried.

> Between the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and last December

They're counting from the start of the pandemic. You'd need a different dataset to conclude much of anything about vaccination effects.

Without building houses for them, this infection rate is unstoppable. I know here in Northern Canada it's not uncommon to have a dozen Natives in a small house.

The only way to help is with wealth increases. Everything else is theatre and destructive. What the government is going to hopelessly do to try to avoid this again, I don't know. I do know it won't work.

There was a similar result with NZ Maori during the Spanish flu. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/1918-influenza-pandemic/de...

I wonder why Europeans do better with these diseases?

Because disease spread easier in the past on the european continent due to wars and comerce. NZ was an isolated island and Alaska is not really accesible without special clothing and supplies.

This and, I suspect, the relative levels of medical care. Check out how the indigenous fared in any country that maintains such a categorization. North America certainly deals a poor hand to its origin people.

Centuries of organized destruction of indigenous cultures and their physical + social infrastructure?

Obscene levels of poverty, less access to medicine, justified skepticism of state health initiatives, abysmal baseline health due to aforementioned, etc.

Perhaps there’s some underlying biological/immune differences, but let’s not put too much effort into overlooking the obvious.

Have read several times that Europeans practice of animal husbandry built up immune systems over the centuries. So lots of deaths. But more spread out.

Native Americans didn’t have same practices. So got hit a lot harder.

> I wonder why Europeans do better with these diseases?

Higher levels of Vitamin D is a factor - because Vitamin D intervenes in several immune system pathways.

CGP Grey explains: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk

The European descendants are less poor.

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