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- Page navigation anchor for RE: Gender InequalityRE: Gender Inequality
The real gender inequality of Covid is that men are more than twice as likely to die and show more severe symptoms compared to women, despite equal gender incidence (1). I was suprised this was not mentioned as a confounding factor in gender testing rates.
Moreover, if you take out Pakistan, which is an obvious outlier, it would appear the curve is nearly flat, and well below 2 for all countries tested (except Pakistan). If men have twice the symptoms and twice the severity, I would have expected much higher testing ratess for men. This is likely because men tend to use health services less and report for testing 12h later when symptomatic (2).
So to recap, men are more severely affected by Covid than women.
Women tend to use earlier and disproportionate testing based on severity of symptoms, but more so in cuntries with lower gender inequality.Competing Interests: None declared.References
- Christina P. Tadiri, Teresa Gisinger, Alexandra Kautzy-Willer, et al. The influence of sex and gender domains on COVID-19 cases and mortality. CMAJ 2020;192:E1041-E1045.
- 1. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00152/full
- 2. https://www.rgare.com/knowledge-center/media/research/covid-19-mortality-rates-by-age-and-gender-why-is-the-disease-killing-more-men-than-women