Looking at the Vermont State dashboard for stats, they report that males and females have similar rates of infection whereas black and hispanic populations have increased incidence of COVID19.
There does not seem to be a reason to prioritize men over women in Vermont from what I can see.
Ah. So in states where men
do die more often from COVID than women, you would support prioritising men over women? For example, in California, where 35,000 men have died from COVID-19 compared to 25,000 women?
It would need to be more granular than that.
For instance, if the greater number of male deaths were included in the number of deaths of people over the age of 65 for instance, or people who belong to some other demographic, then it might not be so obvious.
For instance, if we know that health care workers/persons working in care homes are more likely to be infected, then we would expect to see a higher incidence of women infected compared with men, because more women work in health care compared with men. Similarly, if we found a higher number of truck drivers were infected compared with cashiers, we'd see more men infected compared with women.
So, I don't know if the greater number of male deaths are already accounted for (more likely to have hypertension, heart disease, smoking, etc). Gender/sex may not be the risk factor.
Again, priority lists for vaccination were best predictions of those most likely to have serious negative outcomes if they became infected and/or those most likely to be exposed/expose others.
Very broadly in the US, among the high risk 'essential workers' are people who work in groceries and for Amazon --and truck drivers, as well as health care workers, some teachers, and so on. Many of those essential workers (those who work at grocery stores and for Amazon and sometimes, truck drivers) tend to be economically disadvantaged and disproportionately BIPOC. These are also people who are most income insecure, least likely to be able to take time off for illness or illness of a child/loved one, least likely to have health care, and so on. Plus, the nature of these jobs puts them in close contact with the public: they are exposed much more frequently than most people, and are at higher risk of exposing others by the nature of their work.
We simply cannot perform a genetic analysis and health risk analysis on every single person to determine/guestimate their risk for infection/adverse outcomes/risk of infecting others. It's too costly, we don't know enough and most importantly, it's far too time consuming. We develop large categories that are relatively easily definable in order to get the most number of at risk people vaccinated first, and then move on to everyone else. Currently it's 16 and over for vaccination, period. There have not been studies about vaccination on younger children which is the big hold up on vaccinating them.
