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COVID toll turns spotlight on Europe's taboo of data by race

5 Comments
By Victoria Waldersee

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© Thomson Reuters 2020.

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Excellent article ... saving this to hard disc, for at least a couple of reasons.

1 — It shows that national policies can be blunt instruments of perverse incentives when failing to deal with the fundamental unit of homo sapiens as members of communities rather than nation-states. At our best, we are after all, 'social primates', not 'herded-herding primates'.

2 — The morass of confounding variables and questionable assumptions should serve as a good example of the necessary messiness of science as an ongoing heuristics, not an objective, institutionally sanctioned arbiter of truth ... and certainly not as a fetish for a new secular faith of reason and the faux-meritocracy of credentialism.

I am reminded of a cross disciplinary application of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle ... the act of measuring an event effects that which is measured. At the very least, an honest read of this article should be enough to knock the hubris out those who claim to know the efficacy of policies and extent of the dangers and efficacy of policies.

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

People with dark skin make less vitamin D when exposed to sunlight than light skinned people. In the US, there are way more vitamin D deficient blacks than whites. And there is a clear correlation between vitamin D deficiency and covid19 severity/death. But because we can't discuss race issues openly, nobody is warning about this.

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

@RawBeer According to your and the writer’s strange sick-minded theory the whole African continent would be extremely corona affected because of obvious even worse healthcare, housing, vitamin D conditions. And now let’s quickly return to reality and real data... lol

4 ( +5 / -1 )

And there is a clear correlation between vitamin D deficiency and covid19 severity/death.

The connection is not clear. Some studies have shown a connection; others not. I've also read of studies that show a bigger connection with those at risk from diabetes than from Vitamin D deficiency.

But because we can't discuss race issues openly, nobody is warning about this.

Here in the UK, there has been fairly open discussion about these things. But is it not more of a genetics issue than a race issue? If we look physically different, then we are probably biologically different. But we can over-generalize about such differences. Should we view people from northern Europe/Africa/Asia the same as those from southern Europe/Africa/Asia? And when your granny is from Niigata and your grandad on the other side is from Leeds, where does that place you? I suspect if we all had our DNA tested, we'd find some surprises as to our genetic origins.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

And there is a clear correlation between vitamin D deficiency and covid19 severity/death.

Correlation does not equal causation.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

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