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Amazingly, race – or at least genes – does matter

A single Neanderthal gene found in one in six Britons is likely to blame for up to a million Covid deaths, according to an Oxford academic.

The LZTFL1 gene is a Neanderthal gene found on chromosome three and has been previously shown to double a person’s risk of severe disease and death.

But before now there had never been an estimated figure for how many lives were lost to this single piece of genetic code.

Roughly 15 per cent of Europeans have the Neanderthal form of the gene, compared to about 60 per cent of South Asians.

The interest here being that if we adjust UK death rates for this little fact then how much room is there left for an explanation of inequality being the cause of differential deaths rates?

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Addolff
Addolff
3 years ago

Tim, I think your comment at the end will mean that this study will be consigned to the memory hole, don’t you?

John Galt
3 years ago

Roughly 15 per cent of Europeans have the Neanderthal form of the gene, compared to about 60 per cent of South Asians

If this were true then surely the COVID-19 death rates for China alone would be far higher than the official figure of 5,226 deaths officially recorded.

😉

Bloke in the Fourth Reich
Bloke in the Fourth Reich
3 years ago

I have a great idea to get our names in the papers. Let’s look at 50,000 genes, and correlate them with assigned deaths “of or with covid”.

We know that, whatever (probably small) population we choose to study this in one will pop out with a relative risk of at least 2, and it’s cool to say “x doubles your risk of dying from covid” because people don’t like to die, and covid is still sexy science.

Because the doubling of a small risk isn’t very important, and some people are starting to catch on to the relative risk scam, we have to make it scarier.

So what we need to do is extrapolate this to all global deaths reported “of or with covid” and come up with a scary trojan number. We can stretch it to a million, between friends y’see, it’s a nice round number and sounds really scary.

All we need do now is make it the most eye-catching of this week’s fake epidemiology stories, how about our distant ancestors having wild sex orgies with even hairier hominids? Perfect!

Bloke in the Fourth Reich
Bloke in the Fourth Reich
3 years ago

Seriously,

1) Who can seriously claim a SNP is proof of Neanderthal origin? The best you might be able to do is show it originated at the time Neanderthals were still around, coming over here, taking our jobs and taking our women.

2) An RR of 2 for this SNP (and not reporting how many SNPs were correlated) given the ability to scan the entire genome is seriously fucking lame. If anything it is proof that there is close to zero effect of your genes on risk of covid death.

Matthew L
Matthew L
3 years ago

What race does having the LZTFL1 gene make you?

Ottokring
Ottokring
3 years ago

Duh. Occams razor.

I think we’ll find that Covid fatalities have more to do with
A) age
B) proximity to hospitals
C) proximity to other elderly people with Covid

Neanderthal genes, what a lot of arse.

Ottokring
Ottokring
3 years ago

Is LZTFL1 the new LGBTQIA+ ?

Ljh
Ljh
3 years ago

So nothing to do with squashing early treatments and pushing the elderly from hospital into “care” homes if they failed to succumb? Or do to with comorbidities? Or age?

Jonathan
Jonathan
3 years ago

The interest here being that if we adjust UK death rates for this little fact then how much room is there left for an explanation of inequality being the cause of differential deaths rates?

It depends on whether Neanderthals were White or not…

Ottokring
Ottokring
3 years ago

And if they had free school dinners

philip
philip
3 years ago

Im roughly the same vein

a. the pelvic girdle / birth canal in hom. sap. is narrow and imperfectly adapted.
b. neanderthals had very large heads
c. a female hom. sap. pregnant by a neanderthal faced a probable death sentence
d. survivors of miscegenation would all have neanderthal mothers
e. all men are rapists.

Southerner
Southerner
3 years ago

So a Neanderthal gene could double my chances of dying, to 200 per cent? Interesting…

Steve
Steve
3 years ago

Who can seriously claim a SNP is proof of Neanderthal origin?

Nicola Sturgeon looks more Griphopithecus.

PF
PF
3 years ago

“then how much room is there left for an explanation of inequality being the cause of differential deaths rates”

“LOL”…

Sam Vara
Sam Vara
3 years ago

Yet amazingly, lots of women still want to have sex with Neanderthals.

bloke in spain
bloke in spain
3 years ago

Are Neanderthal genes the one’s that are worn halfway down your arse?

John B
John B
3 years ago

Just one overlooked factor, those who allegedly died of CoVid were going to or actually did, die within a year anyway of something else, just CoVid got to them first, or it is claimed it did.

Dhdhrh
Dhdhrh
3 years ago

This could possibly help with dating.

“Your children’s survival depends on it”

john77
john77
3 years ago

How does one double the risk of death? It’s a dead certainty.

Ottokring
Ottokring
3 years ago

John77

By getting hit by two buses ?

Pcar
Pcar
3 years ago

This is not new, w’ve known about Neanderthal gene issue for well over a year

Before Neanderthal gene issue emerged I was posting from May 2020 about how UK ‘with covid’ deaths correlated with percetage of non-whites (except yellow) in each UK country. Thus, we should not treat everyone as equal

The “bad” gene missing is probably a reason why Nordic, Celtic/Irish deaths lower

Now Telegraph, long after event, has ‘bravely’ decided to report it

I’m guessing Twatter Left going mental about Racist study & Telegraph

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