Today, people are asking why women are less affected by COVID-19 and have significantly lower death rate than men (in Italy, for example: more than 60% of infected are males and more than 70% of death cases are of male).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While there are hypotheses that this is caused by various societal and life style factors and norms, such as \u2018because more men are smokers\u2019 etc., I would like to examine potential genetic causes of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Men carry both X and Y chromosomes. Women carry only X chromosomes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I wrote a couple of years ago on my blog about the differences of dynamics between X and Y chromosomes (see links to my two articles below), I made a hypothesis that women\u2019s chromosome pool is significantly more dynamic and mutable than men\u2019s. The Y part of men\u2019s genes don\u2019t mutate. They carry Y-DNA through generations unchanged. Thus women naturally bring greater adaptability and robustness to environmental conditions than men. Contrary to that men bring certain long-term elements and inertiality, which is also important for stable societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Importantly, perhaps, I also showed an analogy between the combined process of gene evolution in humans and other species, thanks to the presence of both males and females) and PID (Proportional-Integral-Differential) control that is proven to be the most successful type of control in engineering systems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, the nature\u2019s own PID control (where the role of P and D is greater than that of I for the purposes of quick response to effects such as viruses) makes sure that only a relatively smaller number of males compared to the number of females are needed to maintain the human kind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, as usual, Mother Nature and genetics are the winners in this almost game-theoretic scenario of our battle against coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n