Coronavirus exposes gulf between the sexes

There’s a cruel irony in the fact that men, for all their superior strength, are dying in greater numbers than women

How can a strong, healthy man be taken so quickly? Not an overweight or an elderly guy, but a Park Run regular, a lycra-clad cyclist, the bloke you ask to shift that heavy table or open a stubborn jar. How are men with years, decades maybe, of active, productive, non-doddery life ahead just being snuffed out?

Sue Martin, a Cardiff civil servant, spoke of her bafflement this week that her husband, Mal, 58, well enough to walk out to the waiting ambulance, now has scant chance of survival. My friends with much older male partners are terrified, forbidding them from shopping and slathering them in anti-bacterial gel. Others with fit, middle-aged husbands were aghast when our force-of-nature, 55-year-old PM entered intensive care. We are more worried for our menfolk than ourselves.

This virus likes to play its cruel wild card, slaying a student, a healthy young mother or a 13-year-old boy. But mainly its appetite is predictable: the very old, the already unwell, the obese and, all research so far shows, mainly men.

In Britain, 61 per cent of Covid-19 recorded deaths are male. This trend, first observed in China, where 2.8 per cent of male cases died compared with 1.7 per cent of women, was initially ascribed to far more Chinese men smoking. But in Italy the male-female mortality rate is 7.2 to 4.1 per cent, and the sexes smoke about the same.

All the NHS doctors who have so far died are men (and from ethnic minorities) including retired physicians Alfa Saadu, 68, and the Essex GP Habib Zaidi, 76. After 40 years’ service, they’d earned their pensions and were entitled to sit this crisis out. But what quiet courage in returning to the medical front line, clear-eyed that you’re the most likely to die.


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-exposes-gulf-between-the-sexes-rsc69njkv?shareToken=f194e7faf4ff3011666661116493599a&wgu=270525_54264_15865881254807_3c862504b2&wgexpiry=1594364125&utm_source=planit&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_content=22278



There is clearly an evolutionary factor why women fair better though such pandemics, based on the survival of a species

You do not need many males to repopulate a species, but many females are required to do so

Hence why there must be a biological and evolutionary reason why females fair better with their immune system than males

I think much of this has to do with rearing and raising children through history. Where they tend to pick up illnesses their children have and build up tolerance levels. Where they are far more exposed to this than males

However, in the future will this change with now many males taking a more active role in raising kids?

I could be wrong but it makes far more sense for females to have a superior immune system to males, for the continuation of a species

This also exposed the rank stupidity of certain politicians and scientists that deny biological sex

Its clearly not a spectrum or social construct. Sadly it takes disaster like this to show up the stupidity of the PC woke brigade

I do wonder about the figures as for some reason covid19 has brought us back to the original two genders.

Men tend to be less healthy in general I think. Women live longer in general because they take a little better care of themselves. At least in most western societies. I guess there could also be some genetic difference that protects women. Little kids are almost immune to this thing.

And during the 1918 pandemic it was young, healthy folks getting wiped out.

These viruses are unpredictable. We've had 90 year olds survive and 20 year olds die.

inmyopinion wrote:I do wonder about the figures as for some reason covid19 has brought us back to the original two genders.

Funny how that works. They roll your ass into the ER and intubate you, you're a male patient if you got a penis.

Maddog wrote:

inmyopinion wrote:I do wonder about the figures as for some reason covid19 has brought us back to the original two genders.

Funny how that works. They roll your ass into the ER and intubate you, you're a male patient if you got a penis.  

so the old rules do still apply.

Your respiratory system is pretty universal, whether gay or straight or whatever. The question just doesn't present itself.