[SiVal]

When the clinical demand wanes, I hope there will be extensive antibody testing in various regions to do a comparison between how many people actually got it vs. how much damage it did. If, as I suspect, there are significant differences (ex: almost everyone in this town seems to have the antibodies, but nobody died, vs. a third of these people have the antibodies, but a lot of people died), we might be able to learn things such as which public policy decisions mattered most and maybe even which ethnicities are more vulnerable or resistant genetically. If a genetic variation is found, it might even lead to a new generation of preventative therapies that go beyond vaccines to shield people against viruses that don't even exist yet.

[bilbo0s]

Not really.

There are a million reason for differences like that, without studying the problem extremely carefully, you'll never know which of those reasons was consequential. For instance, more people may die in a certain city because there is more pollution in the air, or the concentration of fluoride in the city's water supply is higher, or maybe that city houses a large meat packing plant and an abnormally large number of residents had to roll the dice and work throughout the lockdown. The number of possibilities are nearly endless, and you'd need to eliminate them prior to drawing any conclusions.

Even ethnically, you can't really draw any conclusions. Were people of this ethnicity or that ethnicity more likely to be essential Walmart stockboys than others? That one little detail can have an enormous impact on medical outcomes depending on the contagiousness of a pathogen like covid-19.

To draw any reasonable conclusions, you'd really need far more than just a comparison between regions, because the different regions have such different public health needs and environmental realities. You'd even need more than a simple comparison between ethnicities. You would need to go wayyy more deep. But I can guarantee that researchers will dig deep to find anything that can be used attack similar pathogens in the future.

[xscott]

> without studying the problem extremely carefully, you'll never know[...]

It seems likely to me that this problem will get studied extremely carefully.

[taeric]

I'm convinced this is my aliens theory, but I do think pollution plays a big role. My hypothesis being that long term exposure to high pollution is akin to chronic asthma.

Fits in Italy, as their elderly are retired locals exposed to their terrible air for life. In China, the hard hit had a transient population that moves away on retirement. In New York, it is hitting more men, who are proportionally more likely to with outside jobs such as construction. That is to say, all of the hard hit groups had long term exposure to pollution.

And again I stress. I view this as my conspiracy theory. Really want to not believe it.

[blaser-waffle]

Firefighters have an inordinately high rate of lung cancer, even though comparatively few smoke (as their job comes with physical fitness requirements). This rate of cancer is believed to be tied to regular smoke exposure.

On a lower, slower timeframe I wouldn't be surprised if pollution had the same effect re: weakening the lungs.

[SiVal]

As I said, test for antibodies. Put the "who's more likely to work at Walmart" speculations aside and start with, "Of the people who were provably infected, how likely were they to die?" question. If there are large differences, then look at age (for sure), prior health factors, gender, ethnicity, etc., to see what (if anything) made the virus not matter, and consider whether there might be other ways (besides vaccination) to make future viruses (prob some category) not matter to anyone.