Pandemic one year later – what we’ve learned about risk factors
Bottom Line: A year ago today here are three coronavirus related headlines: Princess Cruises offers refund to passengers on quarantined ship. Royal Caribbean cruise ship docked in New Jersey set to sail Monday. Coronavirus global death toll rises to 910. A year ago, we still weren’t even calling this thing COVID-19 and those headlines probably take you back to a more innocent time before we really realized what we were in store for – especially the people on those cruises. You’re aware much of the early information didn’t pan out. IE: Masks aren’t really effective, before we were told they were. We we told surfaces may be as dangerous as what’s floating in air and we had a need for an endless supply of respirators. One of the other dynamics which moved around a little bit...risk factors for those hardest hits by the virus. It’s still a bit of a mystery why 24% of those contracting the virus are asymptomatic, while we’re still averaging 175 Floridians dying from it daily. Most of the other dynamics, including variants – which aren’t showing to be a greater risk than the original virus, have come into focus.
Thanks to a new study by the University of Copenhagen, which used AI to study risk factors of those most susceptible to COVID-19, we have a clearer picture. They determined there are nine meaningful risk factors. These are those risk factors ranked in order:
- #9 Heart disease
- #8 Diabetes
- #7 Asthma
- #6 COPD
- #5 Neurological disease
- #4 Gender (males fare worse than females generally)
- #3 High blood pressure
- #2 Age
- #1 Weight
Much of what we’d known was confirmed, though the order of importance is new information and, for example, did you realize obesity is the highest risk factor of all or that being male places one at higher risk than five of the risk factors. What this also illustrates is the combination of factors that are within our control and those which aren’t. We can positively influence our weight and blood pressure bad upon behavior however there’s nothing we can do about age and gender...and identifying differently won’t help you here.
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