Why is sub-Saharan Africa a cold-spot for covid? [View all]
Could genetic diversity have anything to do with it?
"So lets rephrase our initial question: Could some populations more or less susceptible to Covid-19 because of their evolutionary history?
Given the odious racist history of biological beliefs about human differences, this is a fraught question to ask, let alone attempt to answer. Social scientists, for example, emphasize the socially constructed nature of race, while rejecting as superficial the possible biological basis to observable differences between racial populations. Population geneticists too acknowledge the myriad social factors that lace through the historical concept of race, and its frequent misuse to support odious racial hierarchies; nevertheless, these geneticists also highlight the growing wealth of data that suggests that individuals in pockets of populations, some small and large, are more likely to have certain genotypically based phenotoypes across certain characteristics. Scientists dont refer to these as racial differences but rather call them population-based differences, and they dont always correlate with popular and often problematic notions of race."
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/03/31/whats-race-got-to-do-with-it-most-of-sub-saharan-africa-emerges-as-coronavirus-cold-spot-which-may-offer-clues-to-finding-covid-19-vaccine/