[DoreenMichele]

There might be, but it probably hasn't been studied and would be highly controversial to try to document it. To most people, that will smack of racism and have echoes of incidents where, for example, it was assumed some ethnicities naturally have lower IQs than others.

[sksnskkcahan]

It’s already widely reported that race is a major risk factor for COVID-19. I doubt fears of looking like a racist are holding people back from reporting that non-racial identifiers contribute to the disease.

[DoreenMichele]

Well, I assumed the comment was being downvoted because "sounds racist." But my comment is also being downvoted.

I'm not personally against identifying physical traits that would help serve as a quick-and-dirty visual test of risk assessment and I don't know what's going on with downvotes on HN beyond "there's a pandemic on and voting has been wonky all year, presumably because people are stressed out."

[Talanes]

It could also be down-voted because the idea of detecting a gene responsible for blood types visually is just silly?

[DoreenMichele]

It could also be down-voted because the idea of detecting a gene responsible for blood types visually is just silly?

I have a predominantly Caucasian genetic disorder. The quick-and-dirty visual test for "How high is your risk of being a carrier or having the condition?" is "Are you White?"

[DoreenMichele]

I have a genetic disorder that is predominantly Caucasian. My oldest son has the same thing. It is a Dread Disease.

When I was getting divorced, I did not want to date men who were likely to be carriers because it's homozygous recessive, so if the father is a carrier there is a 50 percent chance the child will be a carrier and a 50 percent chance they will have CF. I am incapable of producing a "normal" child (and didn't know that when I was having kids).

My quick and dirty genetics test to drastically reduce the odds that I was dating a carrier boiled down to "No White Men Allowed." Other ethnicities are dramatically less likely to be carriers.

So it doesn't sound silly to me at all that you could take one look at someone and infer some stats about the odds of their genetic risks for a specific category.