3 Stories You Should Read 4/09/2020: Greta Bauer, Men and Coronavirus, Fauci

April 9, 2020 Confluence

Reading Time: 2 minutes

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In the category of: Vacation

Fauci speculates Americans could take summer vacations, but there are caveats

“It can be in the cards,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS.

But, he warned: “When we pull back and try to open up the country … we have to be prepared that when the infections start to rear their heads again,” the country has a way to aggressively and effectively “identify, isolate, contract trace and make sure we don’t have those spikes we have now.”

Moving toward normalcy will be gradual, and could be different by region, he said.

“Hopefully, by the time we get to the summer, we will have taken many steps in that direction” that would allow some normalization.

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In the category of: Equal opportunity

More men are dying from coronavirus than women. Why?

“Being a male is a risk factor”: What we know about Covid-19’s death rates in men and women.

One key piece of context for these questions is that there are, in general, a variety of key biological differences in the way men and women fight off infections. Women, for example, tend to mount a stronger immune response. Researchers think this is in part because most women have two X chromosomes, and the X chromosome happens to contain most of the genes related to the immune system (and those with two X chromosomes instead of one also have a wider diversity of immune responses). This extra immune functioning, however, also seems to put women more at risk for autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease.

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In the category of: Nope

Epidemiologist Explains Why Contracting Coronavirus On Purpose Is A ‘Horrible Idea’

“It is all about how much we just don’t know yet,” warned Dr. Greta Bauer in a new column for The New York Times.

An epidemiologist has broken down why deliberately getting infected with the coronavirus in a bid to become immune after recovery is a “really horrible idea right now.”

“It is all about how much we just don’t know yet,” warned Greta Bauer, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Western University in London, Ontario, in a column for The New York Times published Wednesday.

Bauer listed seven reasons why people should not attempt to contract the virus on purpose, noting how some people have considered avoiding social distancing or hosting parties where they can expose themselves to the disease.

Immunity “isn’t a sure thing” and “reinfection could be possible,” Bauer said.

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