[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Julian

Says it exactly as it is.

Explaining why No. 4 in Andrew's list above is perhaps not the fault of any guidance or instructions ( Or lack of ) by HMG.

No 4 in Andrew's list is due to social factors in that group rather than susceptibility.

That's my take from the 'Deprivation' aspect: https://assets.publishing.service.go...020_update.pdf

In summary, people in deprived areas are more likely to be diagnosed and to have poor outcomes following diagnosis than those in less deprived areas. High diagnosis rates may be due to geographic proximity to infections or a high proportion of workers in occupations that are more likely to be exposed. Poor outcomes remain after adjusting for ethnicity, but the role of underlying health conditions requires further investigation.

The 'Ethnicity' section of the above document is only able to report relative numbers, not causes.

For the scientific opinion: https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...67134820303385

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted healthcare disparities in multiple countries. As such morbidity and mortality vary significantly around the globe between populations and ethnic groups. Underlying medical conditions and environmental factors contribute higher incidence in some populations and a genetic predisposition may play a role for severe cases with respiratory failure. Here we investigated whether genetic variation in the key genes for viral entry to host cells—ACE2 and TMPRSS2—and sensing of viral genomic RNAs (i.e., TLR3/7/8) could explain the variation in incidence across diverse ethnic groups. Overall, these genes are under strong selection pressure and have very few nonsynonymous variants in all populations. Genetic determinant for the binding affinity between SARS-CoV-2 and ACE2 does not show significant difference between populations. Non-genetic factors are likely to contribute differential population characteristics affected by COVID-19. Nonetheless, a systematic mutagenesis study on the receptor binding domain of ACE2 is required to understand the difference in host-viral interaction across populations.