Sunday, March 22, 2020



Women are genetically superior.  Coronavirus is killing more men than women

That females are better survivors has long been evident.  You just have to see the aged wisps of female humanity tottering around the place.  Women have to be tougher to cope with the burdens of pregnancy.  Their systems have to provide for two lives

And it is interesting to read below some details of the genetic mechanisms involved. 

But attributing the fewer female deaths  from coronavirus infection to genetics is tendentious.  Coronavirus is primarily a lung disease and more men are smokers.  So the sex-difference appears to be behavioural, not genetic



Coronavirus is killing more men than women, according to early figures. In its first six weeks almost equal numbers of males and females were infected with the disease but only 1.7 per cent of the women went on to die compared with 2.8 per cent of the men. Scientists think they know why: women’s immune systems are stronger than men’s. They’re built that way.

Dr Sharon Moalem, a Canadian-born ­physician, rare disease specialist and author, has a theory that women are genetically tougher than men. In 2016 Moalem and his wife Anna were driving in Toronto. A car ran through a red light and smashed into them. “We rolled,” he recalls. “The cabin, the roof, totally caved in. We were very lucky to be alive. If we hadn’t ducked down, we would probably have been decapitated.”

They were hospitalised for more than a month with very similar injuries. But here’s the strange thing: Anna was released two weeks ­earlier than Sharon. “What was really noticeable was the ­healing time,” he says. “The superficial cuts, for example – her healing time was faster. I got more infections than she did, my infections didn’t clear as fast and I just didn’t get back on my feet to the same degree.”

His delayed recovery and the resilience of his wife did not surprise him. To him it was more proof that women are genetically superior to men. After the crash, he decided to write a book about it, The Better Half: On the Genetic ­Superiority of Women, released next month.

The evidence is strong. Women on average live longer than men. More men are born than women – 105 to every 100 – but, by the age of 40, the numbers are equal and, by 100, 80 per cent of the survivors are female. Women suffer fewer congenital birth abnormalities – tongue-tie, webbed toes and so on – than men. Men are about 20 per cent more likely to get cancer and 40 per cent more likely to die from it. Male children are twice as likely to ­suffer developmental disabilities such as ADHD, autism, learning problems and stammering. Women tend to have better colour vision than men and some are tetrachromatic, which means they may see up to 100 million colours, not the one million most men struggle by on.

Ah, you say, but men are physically stronger than women. Well, no, not in terms of survival. When Stalin’s policies in Soviet Ukraine starved millions, more women than men survived. Men are certainly more muscular and better than women at most sports requiring power. No female sprinter is going to beat Usain Bolt, and men still dominate at marathons. But men are not so good when it comes to extreme endurance contests such as ultra-marathons.

“The further the race, the more difficult the conditions, that’s when men start dropping off,” Moalem says. The point was dramatically made last year when Jasmin Paris, a 35-year-old vet and mother, won the 431km Montane Spine Race along the Pennine Way up to Scotland. “She broke the course record by 12 hours. At the rest stations along the way, she was pumping breast milk for her baby while the men were flat out on the floor.”

Moalem also cites the Transcontinental Race, a bike ride across Europe of about 4000km. Last year that too was won by a woman, Fiona ­Kolbinger, a 24-year-old medical student from Germany. This is happening because, increasingly, women are taking part in events once thought too difficult for them. In fact, they’re ­easier for women than men. Why?

“We think it is twofold,” Moalem says. “One reason is that women have a lower resting metabolic rate, so they don’t exhaust themselves as ­easily. The other piece of this puzzle that I looked at was famine survival, for which women have an immense advantage. I think that’s where the ultra-endurance performance comes from.”

He does not mention the rigours of pregnancy, once compared to running a marathon daily. Surely this is the ultimate proof of his theory? Moalem is too much of a scientist to go there. ­“Suffice to say that a mammalian pregnancy requires a staggering biological response and ­adaptation. Yet until we manage to get an XY male pregnant, there’s really no way for us to make that comparison and know for certain. But I would say that far more impressive even than a genetic female’s capacity to support a pregnancy to term is their ability to make it across the supercentenarian ­finish line. There’s really nothing biologically harder for a human to pull off than making it to 110 years of age and beyond.”

Moalem is equally careful not to draw too many conclusions about coronavirus – yet. “Yes, so far it seems that more men are unfortunately succumbing to COVID-19, but we will only know for certain a few years after the pandemic if more males were affected,” Moalem says. [The figures cited in the first paragraph of this article are based on preliminary results from the Chinese Centre for Disease ­Control and Prevention based on data from 72,314 people diagnosed with COVID-19 as of February 11.] “Mers, another coronavirus that we do have more experience with and more epidemiological data, does in fact kill more males.”

Somehow, for millennia, science and society have managed to overlook all of this. We have ­preferred the strong-man myth. “As a physician and scientist, the schooling that I got was that men are stronger” – meaning not just more muscular but all-round more robust. “It took me 20 years to deconstruct that paradigm.”

Moalem knows there is going to be resistance to his theory. “I thought a lot about that while I was considering whether to write this book. It’s a dangerous idea and it’s going to upset a lot of ­people. It probably has already. Whenever you’re swapping paradigms, there’s a lot of resistance. But it’s such a fundamental rule of biology that ignoring it is to our detriment when it comes to the medical applications. That’s what gave me the impetus and the courage to say, you know, it’s time now for us to make a change.”

One way in which it has been to our detriment is in drug prescriptions. Bizarrely, Moalem says, ­scientists prefer to use male mice to test drugs. “To this day, preclinical research does not require you to use both female and male mice,” he says. Of course, there are studies that use female mice, but scientists often veer towards using males because they are less hormonal than females, which, they say, makes for clearer data. But there’s a drawback, says Moalem: as a result, doctors find that women report more side-effects from drugs than men. This is not because they are weaker, but because they are being overdosed on the basis of tests ­performed on male mice. Women’s bodies hold on to drugs, including alcohol, longer, so the effects and the side effects are intensified.

For Moalem, the central truth underlying his thesis is that women are better built. The reason fewer female babies are born than male is that the construction process is trickier, so slightly more female embryos and foetuses are rejected before birth. “Building a woman is an immensely complicated process,” he says. “It has to go perfectly.

If it doesn’t, then everything is lost.”

Moalem believes that the reason for all this lies deep within women’s cells. Humans normally have 23 pairs of chromosomes – gene-bearing coils of DNA – in each of our cells. But one of these pairs, the sex chromosomes, differs in men and women. In women, it consists of two so-called X chromosomes – one from her mother and one from her father; in men, it consists of an X from the mother and a Y from the father. The Y chromosome’s ­primary function is to produce testes and sperm, and is relatively poor in genetic information ­compared with the X chromosome.

For years it was believed that one of the two X chromosomes in women was effectively silenced. This fed straight into the “men are stronger” mythology. There were even novels and a TV series, The XYY Man, that suggested ­having two Ys made you stronger and inclined to criminality. This is nonsense. In reality, about a quarter of the genes on the “silenced” X chromosome are still active and accessible to female cells. So she has two possible sources of genetic information to fight ­disease, hunger or exhaustion. Men only have one. So having two Xs is, in Moalem’s view, the source of female superiority. “We now know why it’s so important, because so many of the genes that are used to make the brain are on the X chromosome. And so many of the genes that are involved in the immune function are on the X. It’s like having 23 volumes of instruction manuals for your house. But the one that is the most crucial for humans is the one about the brain and immunity. Without immunity, we’re not going to be around much.”

SOURCE 





Allah Akhbar!

Where is Allah when you need him

Coronavirus is killing one person every 10 minutes in Iran, according to the nation's health ministry.

The Tehran government finally voiced the extent of the outbreak within its borders on Thursday after weeks of skewed numbers.

The number of its confirmed cases is currently more than 19,640 with the death toll climbing to 1,433, making Iran the Middle East's worst-affected country.

Kianush Jahanpur, a spokesman for the health ministry, tweeted: 'Based on our information, every 10 minutes one person dies from the coronavirus and some 50 people become infected with the virus every hour in Iran.'

It is the first time that the Iranian authorities have admitted that the scale of the spread is much greater than they previously voiced.

Ali Rabiei, a representative for President Hassan Rouhani, said: 'The death toll may be higher and the test results for (the victims) could have been wrong. 'Some have died and we might not have known it was due to Coronavirus.

'There may be some shortcomings in the figures, and sometimes you may see a jump in our announcement,' according to Fox News. 

But political opposition groups have said that the statistics could in fact be even more severe – indicating that upwards of 7,000 individuals have died due to the contagion.

The government has so far ordered the closure of schools and universities as well as banning sports, cultural and religious gatherings in a bid to control the deadly pathogen.

It has also forced the closure of four holy Shi'ite shrines and dampened the Islamic Republic's celebrations ahead of the Nowruz New Year that begin on Friday. 

It comes after Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the 'dazzling' sacrifices made by doctors and nurses fighting against the coronavirus outbreak in his Persian new year address.

The 80-year-old ruler also claimed the country had 'benefited' from American sanctions, which had made it more self-sufficient, during his live speech.

It had been rumoured that the Ayatollah had contracted coronavirus, although he appeared to be healthy as he gave the speech.

'These acts of sacrifice were made by medical groups, physicians, nurses, assistants, managers and the staff working in hospitals,' he said. 'All these phenomena are a source of dignity and reputation.'

He added: 'Iran benefited from America's sanctions. It made us self-sufficient in all areas.'

Nowruz, or 'new day' in Persian, is an ancient celebration and the most important date in the calendar, when families gather and exchange gifts. But the coronavirus has overshadowed the celebrations.

'Last year was a tumultuous year for the Iranian nation,' said Khamenei. 'It was a year that began with the floods and that ended with the coronavirus ... but we will overcome all hardships with unity.'

On March 9, Khamenei's office announced that his annual speech in the city of Mashhad for Persian new year had been cancelled to prevent further infections of coronavirus in the Middle East's worst-affected country.

But unlike his usual fiery speeches, the anti-U.S. hardliner Khamenei refrained from attacking Iran's longtime foe in his remarks.

'Iran benefited from America's sanctions. It made us self-sufficient in all areas,' said Khamenei.

Friction between Tehran and Washington has increased since 2018 when US President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of Tehran´s 2015 nuclear deal with six nations and re-imposed sanctions on the country, crippling its economy.

Iran on Thursday granted a medical furlough to imprisoned U.S. Navy veteran Michael White who has been in prison since his arrest in 2018. But his release is conditioned on him staying in Iran, U.S. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo said.

White was later sentenced to at least 10 years in prison on charges of insulting Khamenei and posting anti-establishment remarks on social media under a pseudonym.

SOURCE 






The world's happiest countries revealed: Finland keeps the top spot, Afghanistan is ranked the bleakest and the UK and U.S both climb the table

Good to see my hometown ranks highly.  Brisbane really is a pleasant, relaxed place.  I visited a whole list of countries in my youth and felt that Brisbane beat them all.  The Scandinavian countries rank highest but they are too cold and dark for me

Finland has been named the happiest country in the world for the third year in a row by the World Happiness Report - and Afghanistan ranked the bleakest.

The annual United Nations World Happiness Report ranks over 150 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be, according to their evaluations of their own lives.

Denmark takes the No.2 spot in 2020's study, followed by Switzerland in third place and Iceland in fourth. The UK climbs two places to 13th and the U.S is up one place to 18th.

THE HAPPIEST COUNTRIES AND CITIES IN THE WORLD

1. Finland

2. Denmark

3. Switzerland

4. Iceland

5. Norway

6. The Netherlands

7. Sweden

8. New Zealand

9. Luxembourg

10. Austria

11. Canada

12. Australia

13. UK

14. Israel

15. Costa Rica

16. Ireland

17. Germany

18. US

19. Czech Republic

20. Belgium

HAPPIEST CITIES 

1. Helsinki, Finland

2. Aarhus, Denmark

3. Wellington, New Zealand 

4. Zurich, Switzerland

5.  Copenhagen, Denmark

6. Bergen, Norway

7. Oslo, Norway

8. Tel Aviv, Israel

9. Stockholm, Sweden

* 10. Brisbane, Australia *

11. San Jose, Costa Rica

12. Reykjavik, Iceland

13. Toronto Metro, Canada

14. Melbourne, Australia

15. Perth, Australia

16. Auckland, New Zealand

17. Christchurch, New Zealand

18. Washington, USA

19. Dallas, USA

20. Sydney, Australia

In addition to the country rankings, the World Happiness Report 2020, for the first time, has ranked cities around the world according to subjective wellbeing.

The report shows that in general the happiness ranking of cities is almost identical to that of the countries in which they are located. And it comes as no surprise that the happiest city is Finland's capital, Helsinki.

Meanwhile, Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan (186th), is at the bottom of the table followed by Sanaa in Yemen (185th) and Gaza in Palestine (184th). Above those are Port-au-Prince, Haiti (183rd); Juba, South Sudan (182nd); Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (181st); Delhi, India (180th); Maseru, Lesotho (179th); Bangui, CAR (178th), and Cairo in Egypt (177th).

Professor John F. Helliwell of the University of British Columbia, who co-edited the report, said: 'A happy social environment, whether urban or rural, is one where people feel a sense of belonging, where they trust and enjoy each other and their shared institutions.

'There is also more resilience, because shared trust reduces the burden of hardships, and thereby lessens the inequality of wellbeing.'

While Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the wellbeing research centre at the University of Oxford, commented: 'Generally, we find that the average happiness of city residents is more often than not higher than the average happiness of the general country population, especially in countries at the lower end of economic development.

'But this urban happiness advantage evaporates and sometimes turns negative for cities in high-income countries, suggesting that the search for happiness may well be more fruitful when looking to live in more rural areas.'

SOURCE 






Altruism, Generosity, and Selfishness in the Age of Bernie

Senator, and presidential hopeful, Bernie Sanders’ enticing blend of progressivism (which claims reason and science as justification) and socialism (which is skeptical of both) gives cause to inquire into the foundations of his redistributive political mindset.

Sanders’ politics echo the social ideology of Herbert Croly, whose book, The Promise of American Life (1909), introduced a progressive liberalism that lost its intellectual respectability decades ago (for more on this loss, see The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, 2nd edition [1979], by Theodore Lowi). Croly, in turn, was influenced by the “positive polity” of French philosopher Auguste Comte, who coined the term “altruism” to denote the personal sacrifices that his social ideology entailed. Comte claimed to disdain utopian social visions yet proposed (across numerous volumes) “the wildest of them all.” By his lights, “[o]ur harmony as moral beings is impossible on any other foundation but altruism. Nay more, altruism alone can enable us to live, in the highest and truest sense” (see Comte’s primer, The Catechism of Positivism, 1858 [1852], 310–311).

The ethicist and philosopher of economics John Mueller offers a distinction between altruism and everyday generosity: “benevolence [altruism], or good will, can be extended to everyone in the world, and beneficence [generosity], or doing good, cannot” (Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element, 2010, 36). Yet sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and economics teach that sacrificial altruism among humans occurs naturally only within the family. Voluntary generosity, by comparison, usually entails no true sacrifice (see my 2018 paper, “Altruism: From Pagan Virtue to Political Biology,” Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 26: article 4, 1–19).

Croly echoed Comte’s call for altruistic social policies:

The Promise of American life is to be fulfilled—not merely by a maximum amount of economic freedom, but by a certain measure of discipline; not merely by the abundant satisfaction of individual desires, but by a large measure of individual subordination and self-denial. [...] To ask an individual citizen continually to sacrifice his recognized private interest to the welfare of his countrymen is to make an impossible demand, and yet just such a continual sacrifice is apparently required of an individual in a democratic state. The only entirely satisfactory solution of the difficulty is offered by the systematic authoritative transformation of the private interest of the individual into a disinterested devotion to a special object [e.g., a “truly” democratic state]. (The Promise of American Life, 1909: 22; 418, italics added.)

Croly, like Comte, embraced Enlightenment progressivism, by which Robespierre attempted “to lead the people by reason and the people’s enemies by terror”; the people’s reason ultimately led Robespierre onto the guillotine. The other Enlightenment choice available was classical liberalism, from which America’s early political fabric was woven. (For historical analysis of these developments, see two books by Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750–1790 [2012] and The Enlightenment that Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748–1830 [2020].)

Altruism and progressivism necessarily entail coercion. The historian Vegas Liulevicius shows that “[a] clear connection exists between 20th-century plans for utopias and use of terror to bring them about. [... Terror was necessary] because plans for perfection encountered either passive or active resistance” (Utopia and Terror in the 20th Century, 2003, Part 1). The “harmony” that Comte imagined would flow from altruism was illusory.

The prominent academic psychologist and avowed Enlightenment humanist Steven Pinker characterizes modern altruism as “today’s Fascism Lite, which shades into authoritarian populism and Romantic nationalism, [and] is sometimes justified by a crude version of evolutionary psychology in which [...] humans have been selected to sacrifice their interest for the supremacy of their group” (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, 2018: 448).

The prominent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins sides with Pinker on the facts, but differs with him on the spirit: “Human superniceness is a perversion of Darwinism, because, in a wild population, it would be removed by natural selection. [...] Let’s put it even more bluntly. From a rational choice point of view, or from a Darwinian point of view, human superniceness is just plain dumb. But it is the kind of dumb that should be encouraged” (Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist, 2017: 276–277, italics added). “Dumb” behavior and “impossible demands” are unlikely means for perfecting individuals and societies.

The Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Annæus Seneca wrote of generosity that “people must be taught to give benefits freely, receive them freely, and return them freely and to set themselves a grand challenge: not just to match in actions and attitude those to whom we are obligated, but even to outdo them, for the person who should return a favor never catches up unless he gets ahead” (On Benefits, n.d.). Seneca argued that an upward eudæmonic spiral results whenever benefits are given and reciprocated voluntarily.

Generosity and reciprocity nevertheless arise most often as instrumental means to purposeful ends. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes aptly argued that “No man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good; of which, if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence or trust, nor consequently of mutual help” (Leviathan, 1651).

Ayn Rand similarly saw, in “the grace of reality and the nature of life,” a “rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires and feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered the industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment” (The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964: 31).

Sanders, like Comte and Croly, proposes to perfectioneer society through the kind of altruistic policies that, since the late eighteenth century, have wrought havoc on mankind.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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