Tag Archives: culture

COVID E. Asian death rate is 1/100th the Western rate.

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COVID-19 has a decided racial preference for Western blood, killing Americans and Europeans at more than ten times the rate of people in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, or Vietnam. The chart below shows the COVID-19 death rate per million population in several significant countries countries. The US and Belgium is seen to be more than 100 times worse than China or Hong Kong, etc., based on data from http://www.worldometers.info. IN the figure, the death-rate rank of each country is shown on the left, next to the country name.

For clarity, I didn’t include all the countries of Europe, but note that European countries are the majority of the top ten in terms of deaths per million. Belgium is number one with over 1,400. That is somewhat over 0.14% of the population has died of COVID-19 so far.

Peru has the highest COVID-19 death rate in South America at over 1000 per million, 0.1%. The US rate is similar, 0.082%. These are shockingly high numbers despite our best efforts to stop the disease by mandating masks, closing schools, and generally closing our economies. Meanwhile, in China and Japan, the economies are open and the total death rate is only about 1/100 that of Europe or the Americas. Any health numbers from China are suspect, but here I tend to believe it. Their rates are very similar to those in Hong Kong and Taiwan. At 3 per million, China’s death rate is 1/400 th the rate of the US, and Taiwan’s is lower.

This is not for lack of good healthcare systems in Europe, or lack of preparation. As of December 1-10, Germany, a country of 80 million, is seeing a COVID death rate of 388 per day. Japan, a country of 120 million, sees about 20. These are modern countries with good record keeping; Germany is locked down and Japan is open.

The question is why, and the answer seems to be genetics. A British study of the genetics of people who got the disease particularly severely found a few genes responsible, among these, TYK2. “It is part of the system that makes your immune cells more angry, and more inflammatory,” explained Dr Kenneth Baillie, a consultant in medicine at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, who led the Genomicc project. He’s theory is that versions of this gene can allow the virus to put your immune response “into overdrive, putting patients at risk of damaging lung inflammation.” If his explanation is right, a class of anti-inflammatory drugs could work. (I’d already mentioned data suggesting that a baby aspirin or two seems helpful).

As reported in Nature this week, another gene that causes problems is IFNAR2. IFNAR2 is linked to release of interferon, which helps to kick-start the immune system as soon as an infection is detected.

It could be accidental that Asians are just lucky interns of not having the gene variations that make this disease deadly. Alternately, it could be that the disease is was engineered (in China?) and released either as a bio-attack, or by accident. Or it could be a combination. Whatever the cause of the disease, that east Asians should be spared this way is really weird.

Suggesting that this is not biowarfare is the observation that, in San Francisco, the Asian, per case fatality rate is as high as for white people or higher. One problem with this argument is that there is a difference between death rate per confirmed case and death rate per million population. It is possible that, for one reason or another Chinese people in San Francisco do not seek to be tested until they are at death’s door. Such things were seen in Iran and North Korea, for example. It pushed up the per-case death rate to 100%. Another possibility is that the high death rates in the west reflect disease mutation, or perhaps eastern exposure to a non-deadly variant of COVID that never made it west. If this is the case, it would be just as odd as any other explanation of a100x difference in death rates. Maybe I’m being paranoid here, but as the saying goes, even paranoids have enemies.

I think it’s worth noting this strange statistical pattern, even if I have no clear explanation. My advice: take vitamin D and a baby aspirin; and get a pneumonia shot,. I plan to take the vaccine when it’s offered. If a home test becomes available, I’d use that too. Stay safe folks. Whatever the source, this disease is a killer.

Robert Buxbaum, December 16, 2020.

you are what you eat?

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The simplest understanding of this phrase is that you should eat good, healthy foods to be healthy, and that this will make you healthy in body and mind.

The author of the study published this book against GM foods simultaneously with release of his paper.

The author of this book against unhealthy foods faked his analysis to support the book.

Clearly there is some truth to this. Crazy people look crazy and often eat crazy. Even ‘normal’ people, if they eat too much are likely to become fat, lazy, and sick. There is a socio- economic effect (fat people earn less), and a physiological evidence that gut bacteria affects anxiety and depression (at least in rats). My sense here is at the diet extremes though. There is little, or no evidence to suggest you can make yourself more intelligent (or kind or good) by eating more of the right stuff, or just the right foods in just the right amounts. A better diet can make you look better, but there is a core lie at work when you extend this to imply that the real you is your body, or so tied to your body that a healthy mind can not be found in a sickly body. But most evidence is that the mind is the real you, and (following Socrates) that beautiful minds are found in sickly bodies. I’ve seen few (basically, no) healthy poets, writers, or great artists. Neither are there scientists of note (that I can recall) who lived without smoking, drinking, and any bad habits. Many creative people did drugs. George Orwell smoked cigarette, and died of TB, but wrote well to the end. There is no evidence that bad writing or thinking can be improved by health foods. Stupid is as stupid does, and many healthy people are clearly dolts.

Not that it’s always clear what constitutes good health, or what constitutes good food for health, or what constitutes a good mind. Skinny people may be admired and may earn more, but it is not clear they are healthy. Yule Gibbons, the natural food guru died young of stomach cancer. Adele Davis, another the author of “eat right to be healthy,” died of brain cancer. And Jim Fix, “the running doctor” died young of a heat attack while running. Their health foods may have killed them, and that unhealthy foods, like chocolate and coffee can be good for you. It’s likely a question of balance. While a person will feel better who dresses well, the extreme is probably no good. Very often, a person is drawn after his self-image to be the person he pretends. Show me a man who eats only vegetarian, and I’ll show you someone who sees himself as spiritual, or wants to be seen as spiritual. And that man is likely to be drawn to acting spiritual. Among the vegetarians you find Einstein, George B. Shaw, and Gandhi, people who may have been spiritual from the start, but may have been kept to spirituality from their diets. You also find Hitler: spirituality can take all sorts of forms.

Ward Sullivan in the New Yorker

Ward Sullivan in the New Yorker. People eat, drink, and dress like who they are. And people become like those they eat drink and dress like.

Choice of diet also helps select the people you run into. If you eat vegetarian, you’re likely to associate with other vegetarians, and you will likely behave like them. If you eat Chinese, Greek, or Mexican food, you’re likely to associate with these communities and behave like them. Similarly, an orthodox Jew or Moslem is tied to his community with every dinner and every purchase from the kosher or halal store.

And now we come to the bizarre science of bio-systems. Each person is a complex bio-system, with more non-human DNA than human, and more non-human cells than human. A person has a vast army of bugs on him, and a similarly vast pool of bugs within him. Recent research suggests that what we eat affects this bio-system, and through it our mental state. For whatever the mechanism, show me someone who drinks only 30 year Scotch or 40-year-old French wine, and I’ll show you a food snob. By contrast, show me someone who eats good, cheap food, and drinks good, cheap wine or Scotch (Lauder’s or Dewar’s), and I’ll show you a decent person very much like myself, a clever man who either is a man of the people or who wants to be known as one.”Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.” [Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are].

Robert E. Buxbaum, February, 2015. My 16-year-old daughter asked me to write on this topic. Perhaps she didn’t know what it meant, or how true I thought it was, or perhaps she liked my challenges of being 16.