Number of deaths in Asians

[Orangeblossom78]

I wondered if anyone else had noticed there seems to be a higher rate in Asians for example in the doctors and nurse recently also the 13 year old boy and wondered about the reasons for this. Please don't say this is being 'racist' as it isn't... I just wondered if any others had noticed this too.

When I noticed, of the first four doctors to die only one was Asian or of Asian background (as far as I could tell). This seems to be a story which is doing the rounds on the internet - not sure who thinks nigeria and Sudan are in asia?

There is a lot of medical research on respitorary illness and low levels of vitamin D which we store and then use up over winter. By March unless you have been abroad to a hot and sunny country, we are all very depleted and immunity very low. Unless you have a brilliant diet and supplement.
The poorer contries indeed have massive challenged with healthcare/ overcrowding and malnutrition, but as a global community, should it not have spread there like wildfire already?
Would India for example not have been as bad as US is now, having had multiple visitors, backpackers and workers?
I just find that strange. Places like Bali, Thailand too anywhere where affluent Europeans and Americans go.
New York for example is badly affected but not Bondi beach where everyone was out sunbathing recently?
Would love to know if there is a real link but in the meantime, I am ditching sun cream and getting some sun as soon as it hits 17 degrees!

It’s too early to say. I hope they are tracking all of it though- age, sex, race, health conditions, etc.

Oh, they will be. If you know who is more at risk, you know where to target help and who to shield.

Yes I had noticed. My best guess is that its related to higher rates of heart disease and diabetes.

Did you see this?

I wonder if there might be a connection to international travel as well - not only passing through international airports - family visits/business trips but also freight handlers, cleaners etc. at Heathrow, Manchester and Birmingham Airports - more likely to pick up the virus earlier in the pandemic.

This is interesting.

How do we explain the high death rate in Spain and Italy then? Maybe it's down to genetics and diet- they tend not to eat foods high in saturated fats?
Would be interesting to know if ACE2 affects populations with different genetics more intensely than other people.🤷‍♀️

Poppy I have also been thinking about this.

My city, Birmingham, has the largest number of infections/deaths outside London.

There is a high Asian demographic and it is not uncommon for multi-generational families to live under the same room (as in Italy).

Was the 13 year old boy Asian, I have know details but I thought he might be Somali?

My bf at school was south Asian, her family were lovely. Whenever I was at her house there was a stream of visitors and she had a massive extended family, kept in touch with second cousins, all the offspring of her parents/grandparents, basically they were very sociable and came into close contact with 100s of people weekly. Isn’t this how Coronavirus spreads. My parents (white British) saw friends and family intermittently and to be honest were quite resentful if people busted without a months notice!

There is no evidence of a higher death rate in Asian populations. In fact, if you look at the WHO situation reports by country, the majority Asian populations have a lower death rate than the majority white populations (so far). It was noticeable enough that there was a thread here on Mumsnet using that as “proof” China lied about the number of deaths.

nemophilistRebel
'Which although there is lots of reports out at the moment of black and Asian people getting less quality care in general...'
Really? I haven't read anything about this. Can you name your sources as this is despicable if true.

@PlanDeRaccordement Exactly!

People of Asian descent in general are also more likely to have some autoimmune conditions and higher than usual NK cell counts - some of them can be bad without medication eg RA but some of them like hypothyroidism (with and without antibodies) have been linked to longevity / improved outcomes in viral and Cancer illnesses particularly in the elderly.

It's probably related to other factors

I believe there is a possible link being explored between AB blood group and susceptibility to this virus. People from Asian backgrounds are more likely to have AB blood type than those of Caucasian or African descent.

Sorry @GrumpyHoonMain
What are NK counts?

I noticed this and wondered if it was because a high proportion of consultants are Asian. I would be interested to know if I'm talking rubbish though...I'm just thinking out loud about the ethnicities of consultants I have seen in my time.

I agree it could be linked to less likely to get good quality care if non-white and the diabetes/hypertension thing.

That said, all the non-NHS deaths I've seen publicised have been white.

I had also noticed this - and the high death rate in Iran for example. I don't think it's racist to point it out - it is well known that some conditions affect some ethnicities more than others.

Asian doctors only account for about 12% of the doctors in Britain although that is probably a lot more in London where a large proportion of the cases and deaths are. That could also be why there seem to be a disproportionate number of Asians with the disease or dying with it, because they tend to live in urban areas, especially London and places like Bradford and some of the old Lancashire mill towns.

The possible blood group link is blood group A (NOT group AB).

Preliminary results suggest people with A type blood are more at risk of ending up in hospital with the virus and the lowest being group O.

I remember this as my blood group is A!

(I'm not sure, though, if we know if it's because A type people are more at risk of catching it or more at risk of developing symptoms that require hospitalisation).

According to this article, A is the most common blood type in Wuhan.

the normal population in Wuhan has a blood type distribution of 31 percent type A, 24 percent type B, 9 percent type AB, and 34 percent type O

I'm not sure how AB factors into this. People of Asian descent are more likely to have AB blood than Caucasians, but as AB is rare the numbers are pretty low: 7% for Asian people and 3% for Caucasians for the AB +ve group.

So, although blood group may be relevant to coronavirus cases, I'm not sure it's resulting in more Asian cases or deaths.

Blood group by race here: www.livescience.com/36559-common-blood-type-donation.html

3 brown people does not make a pattern - unless you are white

Sorry, I forgot to say - group A is more common among Caucasians than Asians in general (although China may be different as the figures above show).

Larger families means increased risk of catching it elsewhere and spreading within the family. Often overcrowded housing and intergenerational living. I live in a city with over 50% Asian population and many have 3 generations of family living together, elderly parents come over from India etc and also higher incidence of diabetes and heart disease in older Asian people.

Preliminary results suggest people with A type blood are more at risk of ending up in hospital with the virus and the lowest being group O.

Need to be cautious when interpretating this because bigger studies have shown centenarians and supercentenarians across Asia are more likely to have blood group A (circa 32%). So it may just be something as simple as the most elderly in Asia having a specific blood group - it’s not the blood group that puts them at risk it’s their age (and any co-existing co-morbidities).

Italy really doesn't have a much higher multi generational living situation than the UK.
Asian families in the UK however do and 80% of transmission appears to be in households.

www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/heartache-as-nurse-loses-coronavirus-battle-225077/

White nhs nurse

That said, all the non-NHS deaths I've seen publicised have been white

I think that might be the key. There is huge media bias towards reporting news stories about white people.

I grew up in a very diverse area, culturally, in a time when it was pretty rough (very trendy now!). Our local paper often read like it was an edition of Crime Monthly, not a weekly local gazette, and there were sometimes very sad cases of children missing or even shot (one primary aged girl shot by her non-resident father by accident, absolutely heartbreaking stuff and that story has always stayed with me) but they didn't make their way to the mainstream press. Yet similar stories about white kids did.

The NHS has a large number of BAME people working for it in clinical / frontline roles (does anyone have stats?) and so it's not surprising that many of the first cases will be BAME people. Some professions are very popular in certain BAME communities. For example, a university campus I worked at for a while had a building shared by computing, maths and pharmacology. The computing and maths degrees were mixed ethnically but majority white. The pharmacology degree students were overwhelmingly Asian. An interesting cultural phenomenon.

As time goes on, the proof of the pudding will be, as more medics sadly die to this awful disease, does the press focus more on the white ones when they happen or continue to make heroes of the BAME people in the same way they're doing now?