Genetic Pre-Dispositions to Coronavirus

Post Reply New Topic

I've decided to post here because I think posters here are likely to know more about human biology than the folks in the politics section.

I've been thinking about the 28% who are at risk of serious illness from Covid. If we can spot the genetic pattern that makes a 25 year old with no pre-existing conditions get full-blown pneumonia and die while a 65 year old with type 2 diabetes, asthma, obesity and heart problems only gets mild symptoms or no symptoms at all, we can beat this.

A vaccine will be a lot easier to produce if we know who needs it and what they need it for. This is why I think autopsies and rigorous testing of people who are sick with Covid is the way to go to get the answers we need. Once we have those answers, we isolate the 28% from the general population until we have the appropriate vaccine(s) for them. My guess is that the vaccines will happen a lot more quickly once scientific think tanks are under added political pressure to come up with something instead of milking governments for all the extra funding they can get.

As fitness experts and biology boffins, what would be the main obstacles to getting the genetic information we need to effectively predict who will get life-threatening Covid and who won't?

I think you’re asking for something 20 years in the future.

Even for diabetes or pre-diabetes, the risk factors are a bunch of vague stuff like diet and family history, right?

In theory, I guess you could do a biopsy of lung tissue and look at how many ACE2 receptors. But I think they’ve recently found a second factor which helps COVID enter cells. And everything about a biopsy is expensive and risky to the patient, and not something we can do on a widespread public health basis.

Have you heard about the association between blood types and relative severity of COVID?

Supposedly, people with Type O blood are less susceptible to serious COVID than people with Type A blood.