Despite relentlessly battering the world with uncertainty after uncertainty, some pieces of conventional wisdom about COVID-19 have remained unchanged since early on in the pandemic. One is the observation that more men die of the disease than women, despite having comparable rates of infection. This has sparked a deluge of research articles and news coverage (including by The Scientist) trying to parse out why this trend exists and what it could mean.
In August 2020, researchers from Yale University published one of the first studies to report differences in the immune response between men and women with COVID-19. This study generated a flurry of both public and scientific interest, and has already been cited in more than 400 publications. However, it also elicited a recent response article in Nature challenging the statistical robustness of the results and expressing concern at the original paper’s suggestion that the findings might guide sex-specific ...
