Harvard shows that the coronavirus does not affect men more than women

The numbers indicate that the lethality of covid-19 is greater among men, but it is due to different variables.

In August 2020, a report in the New York Times newspaper offered a couple of guidelines to explain why the coronavirus was hitting the male population harder . In the United States, deaths were 30% higher among men than women , and it seemed like a pattern . However, a Harvard study has shown that there are other issues to consider to explain the data.

According to research published in the scientific journal Social Science and Medicine , the different way in which covid-19 has affected the sexes is due more to contextual factors than to their gender. To begin with, the Harvard laboratory analysis has shown that the effect of the coronavirus is very different between the different areas of the North American country and that it has not remained stable throughout the pandemic. For example, during the first wave, the number of male deaths in New York increased by 72.7% , although in subsequent waves the trend has not been maintained and the results are even between genders.

"A single-factor approach focused on sex-linked traits cannot explain the variation we have observed over time and across different geographic areas. Our data do not support the view that disparity effects of covid-19 19 according to sex is large, stable and consistent over time , "says Ann Caroline Danielsen , lead author of the Harvard research.

According to the research, the difference in the impact of the coronavirus depends largely on other variables such as the obligation to wear a mask, confinements and quarantines . "The 13-month pandemic data presented here support the view that factors related to gender and other social factors (for example, age demographics and occupational stratification and comorbidities of gender and race) are potentially as o more relevant than biological sex in shaping gender/sex disparities in vulnerability to COVID-19," the report concludes.

Thus, the data analyzed over 55 weeks has revealed that the lethality of covid-19 is not twice as high among men as among women, but is closer to 1.14% more among men , which indicates that it cannot be attributed solely to its gender.

With these numbers, the Harvard researchers recommend a change of focus on the study. " Scientists risk wasting time, energy, and resources if they don't pay attention to social factors related to sex," warns Sarah S. Richardson , one of the study's authors.