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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

> And all Asian countries, without a single exception, have outperformed Europe, US, and SA by more than an order of magnitude

We may be playing out a new chapter of Guns, Germs, and Steel, where the germs source from East Asia instead of eastern Europe and the Middle East. The death toll may be a pale comparison to the % of lives lost among First Nations people during the colonial era, but we aren't fighting many territory wars these days. It's more proxy wars now, and economic wars.

Over the course of say 3 epidemics in as many decades, the differentials in economic harm could compound substantially.

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Unlike the GG&S case, where smallpox and influenza decimated (literally) the new world peoples, there is no evidence that East Asians had evolved resistance to the coronaviruses prior to the pandemic. What differences in death rate we have seen can better be explained by social organization than inheritance.

I took OP as implying this is more than simple public policy. I sort of suspect the same thing.

But even if you're right, social darwinism can do measurable amounts of damage. Added to the levels of stupid we already exhibit, this certainly is not helping things.

There is some kind of adaptation at play, although I think it's likely a social rather than immunological one. The specific mechanisms aren't as important as the fact that the West is generally worse affected by the pandemic.

I also didn't take the comment as implying any deliberate ill intent on China's part. European germs decimated indigenous populations whether or not they were spread intentionally.

It is an interesting point, although I think if pandemics become more common the West will adapt. As TFA mentioned, a promising vaccine was created in Boston within two days of receiving the digital sequence of the virus DNA (not even a live sample!). As the risks of pandemics become more widely understood, there will be increasing pressure to accelerate vaccine rollout for future events.

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