I'm such a loser
The coronavirus is disproportionately impacting communities of color. We must focus response efforts on health economic equity & acknowledge the root causes driving these disparities. Join me, Ernie Johnson &
Twitter 7pm ET tonite #NBATogether
Lance is writing on this, but he thinks it may be US blacks' lifestyle--obesity, drug use etc.
African Americans: almost half of Milwaukee County’s 945 cases and 81% of its 27 deaths in a county whose population is 26% black.
In Michigan, where the state’s population is 14% black, African Americans made up 35% of cases and 40% of deaths
African Americans in the US are disproportionately dying from covid-19. It seems that 76% of obese African Americans are also vitamin D deficient. Virtually all covid patients in ICU under 65 are D deficient.
http://www.cooperinstitute.org/2019/09/24/african-americans-at-greatest-risk-of-vitamin-d-deficiency
What Do The Natives Have In Common With The Niggers? The Fact That They're A Low Socioeconomic Status Ethnic Group In America And, Like Niggers ,Are More Susceptible To Disease And Death Because Of This.
"Get Hooked Up To I.V. On Me, Stupid!" - Cuete 2x
Why? because Low Socioeconomic Status Encompasses Poverty And Poverty Entails Greater Life Stressors (Work Related Stress, Finance Related Stress, A Smaller Social Network, Fewer Close Social Connections, Lower Status Among Those Few Social Connections, Unhealthy Behaviors Including Poor Diet, Lack Of Exercise, Indulgence In Vices (Alcohol, Tobacco, Illicit Drugs, Excess Junk Food And Fast Food, Etc.), All Of Which Results In A Greater Likelihood Of Disease And Early Death.
We have a moral imperative to acknowledge the reality of IQ. Low IQ is a risk factor for all causes of death, shows substantial genetic influence, and makes living in a complex society impenetrable. To assume those with low IQ just lack motivation is cruel https://quillette.com/2018/08/25/the-dangers-of-ignoring-cognitive-inequality/ …
"how smart you are affects how likely you are to stay alive. If you have an IQ even fifteen points higher than the average when you're 11 years old, you'll have a 21 percent higher chance of surviving into your seventies." a.co/d/e6vofih
“Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident.”
African Americans in Illinois, for example, accounted for 29% of confirmed cases and 41% of deaths as of Monday morning, yet they make up only 15% of the state’s population”
Despite making up just 13 per cent of the UK population, a third of patients who fall critically ill with COVID-19 are from black, Asian or minority ethnic (BME) groups.
There is now a racial justice angle on the coronavirus pandemic. Ibram X. Kendi, Director of Antiracist Research at American University, led the charge in the Atlantic a week ago, calling for data on COVID-19 deaths broken down by race. Nikole Hannah-Jones (whose work Wilfred Reilly mentioned in this space back in February) followed up with a Twitter thread documenting the disparate impact the virus has had on black Americans. Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top immunologist, hit a similar theme in a recent press conference. To sum up the argument: Black people make up roughly 14 percent of the American population, but far more than 14 percent of Americans killed thus far by COVID-19.
According to one view, this racial disparity amounts to evidence of systemic racism. But the argument rests on the false presumption that, in the absence of racism, we would see equal health outcomes by race. The data suggest otherwise.
In fact, blacks are more likely than whites to die of many diseases—not just this one. In other cases, the reverse is true. According to CDC mortality data, whites are more likely than blacks to die of chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, liver disease, and eight different types of cancer. The same thinking that attributes the racial disparity in COVID-19 deaths to systemic racism against blacks could be applied equally to argue the existence of systemic racism against whites.
In some cases, there are obvious biological reasons for racial disparities in disease. Melanin content alone might explain the racial disparity in skin cancer, for example. But in other cases, the source of the disparity is mysterious. Why are whites more likely to die of Alzheimer’s? We don’t know. What’s important is that disparities between groups are not abnormal and are not, by themselves, a sign of any deeper societal malady.
A softer version of the above-described argument would concede that racial disparities in COVID-19 don’t prove anything by themselves—but would point to the various risk factors that nevertheless make black Americans more susceptible to COVID-19. Blacks are more likely to work in the service sector, for instance, which means they have more opportunities to contract the virus. Moreover, blacks are more likely to suffer from diabetes, asthma, obesity, and hypertension, all of which make the virus more deadly. Moreover, black Americans are less likely to have access to high-quality health care, and are more likely to live in areas that are served by over-burdened hospitals and emergency-response services.
Latinos and blacks are dying at higher rates from #COVID19 than whites in part due to underlying diseases (obesity, diabetes). These populations in NY rely more heavily on gov't food assistance programs, full of high-carb junk food (donuts for breakfast)
Because #COVID19 disproportionately affects people with chronic diseases, and bc those diseases disproportionately affect communities of color, we're seeing higher death-rates of blacks, latinos. This is devastating for people w/ fewest resources.
Photographer who worked Jazz-Pistons game in coma after contracting COVID-19
Maybe they say Black folks is getting the virus more than whites is because they spreading it in poor areas where blacks don’t have health insurance and blacks can’t stay they ass in the house!!
The #CoronavirusPandemic has reminded us to never take anything for granted! No school, no sports, no food, no water, no toilet paper. One day it’s here, the next day it’s gone. The only thing that we will never lose is our FAITH! Keep praying! This too, shall pass!
RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND BEHAVIOR INCREASE DURING OUTBREAKS BECAUSE THEY'RE ADAPTIVE. THEY UNCONSCIOUSLY INFLUENCE PEOPLE TO BEHAVE IN WAYS THAT PRESERVE THEIR HEALTH AND PREVENT THEM FROM BECOMING INFECTED AND DEVELOPING DISEASE.
People have evolved a 'behavioral immune system' to avoid contagion.
It usually errs on the side of caution (like a fire alarm), it often makes mistakes, & it may not be ethically optimal.
But it wouldn't have evolved if it wasn't adaptively useful for survival & reproduction.
https://www.amazon.com/Epidemics-Society-Black-Death-Present/dp/0300192215
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/a-visual-history-of-pandemics/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-political-animal/202007/short-history-plague
“I became a Christian during the Coronavirus.”I’m praying millions are able to say that when this is all over.
On examination, everyday life is full of small defensive moves against contamination, some motivated by feelings, like disgust, that arise without conscious reflection. When you open the door of a gas station bathroom only to decide you can hold it for a few more miles, or when you put as much distance as possible between yourself and a person who is coughing and sneezing in a waiting room, you are displaying a behavioral immune response.
But these individual actions are just the tip of the iceberg, according to Thornhill and a growing camp of evolutionary theorists. Our moment-to-moment psychological reactions to the threat of illness, they suggest, have a huge cumulative effect on culture. Not only that—and here’s where Thornhill’s theory really starts to fire the imagination—these deep interactions between local pathogens and human social evolution may explain many of the basic differences we observe between cultures. How does your culture behave toward strangers? What kind of government do you live under? Who are your sexual partners? What values do you share? All of these questions may mask a more fundamental one: What germs are you warding off?
The threat of disease is not uniform around the world. In general, higher, colder, and drier regions have fewer infectious diseases than warmer, wetter climates. To survive, people in this latter sort of terrain must withstand a higher degree of “pathogen stress.” Thornhill and his colleagues theorize that, over time, the pathogen stress endemic to a place tends to steer a culture in distinct ways. Research has long shown that people in tropical climates with high pathogen loads, for example, are more likely to develop a taste for spicy food, because certain compounds in these foods have antimicrobial properties. They are also prone to value physical attractiveness—a signal of health and “immunocompetence,” according to evolutionary theorists—more highly in mates than people living in cooler latitudes do. But the implications don’t stop there. According to the “pathogen stress theory of values,” the evolutionary case that Thornhill and his colleagues have put forward, our behavioral immune systems—our group responses to local disease threats—play a decisive role in shaping our various political systems, religions, and shared moral views.
https://twitter.com/PsychoSchmitt/status/1244997472549777411
If they are right, Thornhill and his colleagues may be on their way to unlocking some of the most stubborn mysteries of human behavior. Their theory may help explain why authoritarian governments tend to persist in certain latitudes while democracies rise in others; why some cultures are xenophobic and others are relatively open to strangers; why certain peoples value equality and individuality while others prize hierarchical structures and strict adherence to tradition. What’s more, their work may offer a clear insight into how societies change. According to Thornhill’s findings, striking at the root of infectious disease threats is by far the most effective form of social engineering available to any would-be reformer.
If you were looking for a paradigm-shifting theory about human behavior, step right up. “Once we started looking for evidence that pathogens shape culture,” Thornhill told me, “we began to find it in damn near every place we looked.”
"You still hear people say that the old South will rise again," Thornhill says. "But I doubt it has a chance unless disease prevalence goes up dramatically."
THORNHILL WAS STEERED TOWARD the topic of the human psychological reaction to disease in the early 2000s by a young graduate student advisee named Corey Fincher. Fincher had arrived at the University of New Mexico intending to study the mating behavior of rattlesnakes. After a time, however, he instead became curious about the evolutionary effects of disease on human cultural behavior—and particularly about the question of why cultures tend to fall along a spectrum between individualist and collectivist dispositions.
Psychologists and other social scientists have long been curious about this robust difference between human populations. In strongly collectivist societies, group membership forms the foundation of one’s identity. Sacrificing for the common good and maintaining harmonious ties with family and kin are expected. By contrast, in strongly individualist societies like those of the United Kingdom, the U.S., Australia, and the Netherlands, individual rights are valued above duties to others. One’s identity does not derive from the group, but rather is built through personal actions and achievements. Although these differences have been confirmed by many cross-cultural studies in a variety of different ways, no one had come up with a convincing evolutionary theory to suggest why it would be advantageous for one group of people to become more collectivist and another group to become more individualist.
Fincher suspected that many behaviors in collectivist cultures might be masks for behavioral immune responses. To take one key example, collectivist cultures tend to be both more xenophobic and more ethnocentric than individualist cultures. Keeping strangers away might be a valuable defense against foreign pathogens, Fincher thought. And a strong preference for in-group mating might help maintain a community’s hereditary immunities to local disease strains. To test his hypothesis, Fincher set out to see whether places with heavier disease loads also tended toward these sorts of collectivist values.
Working with Damian Murray and Mark Schaller, two psychologists from the University of British Columbia, and Thornhill, Fincher compared existing databases that rated cultural groups on the individualist-collectivist spectrum with data collected from the Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Network and other sources. The team paid special attention to nine pathogens (including malaria, leprosy, dengue, typhus, and tuberculosis) that are detrimental to human reproductive fitness. What the team found was a strong correlation between collectivist values and places with high pathogen stress. In 2008, Fincher, Thornhill, Schaller, and Murray published a major paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B that laid out the connection.
In a non-clinical scenario such religious scrupulosity is correlated with conservative or traditional sexual and family attitudes and behaviors with religiosity increasing in the presence of perceived mating competition (Weeden et al., 2008; Li et al., 2010). In other words, religious scrupulosity may operate to prevent risk taking behaviors that might lead, in some circumstances, to pathogen transmission.
Scrupulosity can also be seen to play a major role in religiosity through enhanced self-monitoring of thoughts and behavior. As a result, a religiously scrupulous person is persistently concerned as to whether they have sinned in thought, word, or deed (Abramowitz et al., 2002). Psychometric research has revealed two dimensions of scrupulosity. The first is the fear of sin, in which individuals assess the frequency of their doubts and fears concerning their sins and the degree to which this affects their everyday life. The second dimension is the fear of God, in which the consequences of disobeying God are assessed (Olatunji et al., 2007a, b).
A growing literature has considered the role of disgust on the nature, extent, and expression of religious beliefs (e.g., Ritter et al., 2016). While this literature has focused on disgust sensitivity and general religious fundamentalism (Terrizzi et al., 2010, 2012b; Tybur et al., 2010) or specific forms of religious scrupulosity (Olatunji et al., 2005; Olatunji, 2008), there has been a dearth of research considering the relationship between discrete types of disgust sensitivity or even the emotional state of disgust (as in elevated state disgust) and specific forms of religious beliefs. The studies reported here attempt to address this gap and delineate the role of different types of disgust sensitivity and induced disgust on fear of sin and fear of God.
At first pass it may not be immediately clear how disgust can facilitate religiosity yet as is discussed above religion serves as an adaptive response to environmental threats such as infectious disease. The facilitation of specific reproductive strategies that are operationalized within certain religious codes is an example of a behavioral mechanism of this adaptive response. This class of behaviors can also be described within a theoretical model called the Human Behavioral Immune System (HBIS), which describes behaviors that have a role protecting individuals and groups from pathogens and infections by delineating psychological boundaries that separate the in- and out-group members (Schaller and Murray, 2011; Terrizzi et al., 2012a). There are obvious similarities here with religious organizations that define boundaries that are constructed to maintain a socially conservative value system focusing on “adherence to social norms, in-group cohesion and out-group avoidance” (Terrizzi et al., 2012a, p. 106). Indeed, the HBIS may be seen as operating on individuals through belief and behavior such as promulgating social organizations such as churches, prayer meetings, etc., and thus providing an environmental immune system of sorts; a system of behaviors that prevent contagion within the church by regulating social behavior and providing a social barrier from those outside the church (see Henneberg, 2011; Wiebe, 2013). In other words: “(A)lthough religion apparently is for establishing a social marker of group alliance and allegiance, at the most fundamental level, it may be for the avoidance and management of infectious disease” (Fincher and Thornhill, 2008).
Anti-pathogen behaviors that are promoted by the experience of disgust can foster the separation of members of an in-group population (i.e., the group to which the disgust holder belongs) from members of the outgroup population (i.e., the group which strangers belong). Such a separation would facilitate a general psychological tendency for social conservatism (see e.g., Schaller et al., 2015; Brown et al., 2016). Indeed, there is much evidence supporting the faciliatory role of pathogen stress in the development of social, political and even religious conservatism (e.g., Thornhill et al., 2009; Aarøe et al., 2017). Religious scrupulosity underpins religious fundamentalism yet the mediating role of pathogen stress on scrupulosity has yet to be explored.
Work suggests that disgust is more than a singular defense system that protects the body from pathogens (Rozin et al., 2008). Although multiple models for disgust exist (Rozin and Fallon, 1987; Olatunji et al., 2007c), one recent evolutionary-adaptive framework for disgust may be particularly salient to the understanding of religiosity (Tybur et al., 2009, 2010). Per the evolutionary theory detailed by Tybur et al. (2009), there are three domains for disgust sensitivity; three clusters of situations or contexts in which the basic emotion of disgust operates to facilitate individual, cultural, and evolutionary adaptation to promote survival and reproductive success. This particular model of disgust is comprised of pathogen, sexual, and moral domains of disgust sensitivity (Olatunji et al., 2007c, 2012; Tybur et al., 2009, 2010, 2012)1.
The importance of disgust is further reinforced by an overview of the neurological substrates that mediate its experience (see Calder, 2003). In their extensive review of the neurological substrates that underpin the experience of the various forms of disgust Vicario et al. (2017) concluded that distinct forms of disgust may be represented by a number of overlapping and distributed networks that each converge at the anterior insula. This neural substrate has long been seen to play a fundamental role in the perception of facial display of disgust as well as the gustatory experience of bad tastes (Phillips et al., 1997, 1998).
The importance of disgust is further reinforced by an overview of the neurological substrates that mediate its experience (see Calder, 2003). In their extensive review of the neurological substrates that underpin the experience of the various forms of disgust Vicario et al. (2017) concluded that distinct forms of disgust may be represented by a number of overlapping and distributed networks that each converge at the anterior insula. This neural substrate has long been seen to play a fundamental role in the perception of facial display of disgust as well as the gustatory experience of bad tastes (Phillips et al., 1997, 1998).
The Role of Pathogen Disgust and the Fear of God
The importance of cleanliness is a significant feature in nearly all major religious affiliations (Preston and Ritter, 2012). Pathogen disgust likely mediates the rejection of out-groups that potentially pose the threat of contamination (Schaller and Murray, 2011). Thus, religious beliefs concerning purity may be related to negative attitudes toward out-groups including homosexuals (Olatunji, 2008; Inbar et al., 2012; Terrizzi et al., 2012b), foreigners, and immigrants (Navarrete and Fessler, 2006; Hodson and Costello, 2007), and may stem from concern that these groups may potentially transmit pathogens and disease (Tybur et al., 2010). In addition to the direct mediation of attitudes about threatening groups, disgust may operate indirectly through religious beliefs and attitudes (Olatunji, 2008). Core disgust – which is highly akin to pathogen disgust – indirectly influences attitudes toward homosexuals through fear of sin and conservative sexual attitudes (Olatunji, 2008). In essence, Christian identification can serve as a marker of in-group conformance with norms of purity (Graham et al., 2009). This in turn can limit the potential for infection by pathogens coming from outsiders. Consistent with this is research suggesting diversity in religious groups increases alongside parasite stress levels (Fincher and Thornhill, 2008; Thornhill and Fincher, 2014a, b). As a result, it is hypothesized that pathogen disgust will predict religious scrupulosity generally and of fear of sin and fear of God specifically.
Historical Prevalence of Infectious Disease
https://www.livescience.com/disease-root-of-evil-beliefs.html
"We uncovered consistent evidence that historical pathogen prevalence is related to an increased tendency to believe that there are forces of evil at work in the world," the researchers reported. Correlations between belief in the devil and historic, widespread disease were the strongest in Nigeria, Bangladesh and the Philippines; those correlations were the weakest in the Czech Republic, Germany and Sweden, the scientists found.
"We uncovered consistent evidence that historical pathogen prevalence is related to an increased tendency to believe that there are forces of evil at work in the world," the researchers reported. Correlations between belief in the devil and historic, widespread disease were the strongest in Nigeria, Bangladesh and the Philippines; those correlations were the weakest in the Czech Republic, Germany and Sweden, the scientists found.
Viewing disease as evil would have promoted behavior that contained infection and limited outbreaks, benefiting the overall health of a community, the researchers said. Belief systems with a strong sense of good and evil as active forces thereby could have provided an advantage to groups of people living in areas of the world where the risk of contracting contagious diseases was high, the scientists added.
Once such convictions become embedded in a culture, their influence can linger for generations. Even today, when scientific explanations for disease are readily available, "such thinking remains evident in many modern societies, wherein health complaints are sometimes attributed to the will of God or the work of the devil and spiritual remedies persist," the authors wrote.
A large international team of researchers uncovered strong statistical evidence matching the prevalence of various pathogens with high levels of moral vitalism – better known as a belief in spiritual forces of good and evil.
The results suggest that in a world where invisible agents of infection spread unchecked, moral vitalism might reinforce actions that keep contamination to a minimum in what's referred to as a function of our 'behavioural immune system', in turn reinforcing those beliefs.
"By providing a framework for predicting the spread of infectious disease, moral vitalism would also have facilitated (or at least cognitively justified) behavioural strategies designed to limit infection," the researchers write in their report.
From ancient times to the modern age, there's no shortage of examples illustrating how we imagine a relationship between evil and illness. Whether in the form of individual exorcisms or pogroms aimed at wiping out entire populations, morality and disease have long gone hand-in-hand.
FURTHER READING:
That said, evolution can be applied to the study of religion at a more granular level. Specifically, religious edicts might yield a survival advantage to individuals who adhere to the edicts in question.
In my 2011 book, The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal about Human Nature (pp. 47-48), I offer a biological-based explanation of a Kosher prohibition against eating shellfish. In his 2013 book The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health, John Durant posits that 15 to 20% of the 613 Mitzot (commandments) address prescriptions for personal hygiene and public health. The ancient Jews might not have explicitly known about germ theory but they certainly seemed to have a good handle on how to behaviorally inoculate themselves from dangerous pathogens.
Many of these religious edicts are perfectly applicable to the current COVID-19 scourge, albeit some contemporary individuals are violating the instruction for social distancing via their desire to engage in collective prayer.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/homo-consumericus/201204/food-prohibitions-god-s-will-or-earthly-cultural-adaptation
Many of these religious edicts are perfectly applicable to the current COVID-19 scourge, albeit some contemporary individuals are violating the instruction for social distancing via their desire to engage in collective prayer.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/homo-consumericus/201204/food-prohibitions-god-s-will-or-earthly-cultural-adaptation
“Why do we use spices in our foods? Several lines of evidence indicate that spicing may represent a class of cultural adaptations to the problem of food-borne pathogens. Many spices are antimicrobials that can kill pathogens in foods.” amzn.to/37A8S7b
