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Sunday, July 27, 2025

The COVID-19 Pandemic: Are men more at risk of dying?

by

1336 days ago
20211130

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health, men seem to be af­fect­ed more se­vere­ly by COVID-19 than women. Oth­er stud­ies from ear­ly re­search sug­gest men are al­so dy­ing at a high­er rate from COVID-19 than women.

Why COVID-19 af­fects men more sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­mains a mys­tery, and health of­fi­cials are work­ing to de­ter­mine if the rea­son falls to be­hav­iour, hor­mones, genes or the im­mune sys­tem, or some com­bi­na­tion of all. The dis­par­i­ty prob­a­bly has sev­er­al caus­es.

A Gallup poll from April 2021 found that 80% of women were con­cerned about catch­ing COVID-19 ver­sus 68% of men. Women al­so seemed to take the threat of the virus more se­ri­ous­ly than men. In sev­er­al coun­tries, in­clud­ing the Nether­lands, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Spain, about twice as many men as women have died from COVID-19.

What does the Da­ta show?

A key sur­vey, one by Cleve­land Clin­ic, USA re­veals that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is af­fect­ing both the men­tal and phys­i­cal health of men and as a re­sult, some men are neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed while oth­ers are mak­ing health­i­er choic­es.

In this sur­vey among ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 US males 18 years or old­er, Cleve­land Clin­ic found that 77% of men re­port their stress lev­el has in­creased as a re­sult of COVID-19, 59 per­cent of men have felt iso­lat­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and near­ly half (45 per­cent) of men say their emo­tion­al/men­tal health has wors­ened dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

This sur­vey was is­sued as part of Cleve­land Clin­ic’s fifth an­nu­al ed­u­ca­tion­al cam­paign, “MEN­tion It®,” which aims to ad­dress the fact that men of­ten do not “MEN­tion” health is­sues or take steps to pre­vent them.

Key sur­vey find­ings from CLEVE­LAND CLIN­IC:

- Men may not MEN­tion It, but COVID-19 is tak­ing a toll on their men­tal health

- Three-in-five men (59%) feel COVID-19 has had a greater neg­a­tive im­pact on their men­tal health than the 2008 re­ces­sion.

- 66% of men say they rarely talk about the im­pact COVID-19 has had on their men­tal health.

Many men strug­gle to stay healthy dur­ing the pan­dem­ic

- Half of men (48%) have put off see­ing a doc­tor for non-COVID-19 re­lat­ed health is­sues over the last few months – this is even high­er among men 18-34 (56%).

- 40% of men say they are strug­gling to stay healthy dur­ing COVID-19.

- A quar­ter (24%) of men re­port weight gain dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Men ARE dy­ing from COVID more than women

Al­though age is the biggest risk fac­tor when it comes to high­er death rates, there is al­so a gen­der gap. Glob­al Health 50/50, a group de­vot­ed to equal­i­ty of the sex­es in health, finds that “In most coun­tries, avail­able da­ta in­di­cates that men have been up­wards of 50 per­cent more like­ly to die fol­low­ing di­ag­no­sis than women.”

Be­cause COVID-19 pa­tients with un­der­ly­ing health is­sues fall vic­tim to the virus more of­ten, health ex­perts be­lieve that men hav­ing a high­er num­ber of these un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions is a fac­tor in why men die of the coro­n­avirus more than women.

THE GEN­DER GAP OF HEALTH

The Im­mune Sys­tem

The im­mune sys­tem may hold oth­er clues. An emerg­ing body of re­search has re­vealed that women’s bod­ies are bet­ter at fight­ing off al­most all in­fec­tious dis­eases than men, pos­si­bly thanks to the hor­mones in their sys­tems and the genes on their two X chro­mo­somes. For in­stance, women with acute HIV in­fec­tions have 40% less vi­ral ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al in their blood than men and women are less sus­cep­ti­ble to the virus­es that cause he­pati­tis B and C.

So­cial Fac­tors

With health con­cerns, the da­ta clear­ly shows that men de­lay seek­ing med­ical care more than women do. The psy­chol­o­gy of why men hes­i­tate to vis­it doc­tors is an age-old ques­tion. Are they too busy? Not “sick enough?” Do they think a doc­tor’s vis­it is go­ing to be un­com­fort­able? Are they afraid of what might be dis­cov­ered? An on­line sur­vey com­mis­sioned by Har­vard Health found that it’s a mix­ture of all these things.

Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, the top ex­cuse men make to avoid seek­ing health care is that they are too busy. The sec­ond-most com­mon ex­cuse? They are “afraid of find­ing out some­thing might be se­ri­ous­ly wrong.” Fi­nal­ly, the dis­com­fort of some an­nu­al ex­ams (such as prostate checks, tes­tic­u­lar ex­ams, colon can­cer screen­ings and the like) is an­oth­er top rea­son men don’t go to doc­tors. An­oth­er study from the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health the­o­rized that men may fear look­ing vul­ner­a­ble and of­ten on­ly seek care when en­cour­aged by their fe­male part­ners.

Un­til the com­plex­i­ties of sex dif­fer­ences in the sever­i­ty of COVID-19 are prop­er­ly un­der­stood, we should use the re­li­able in­for­ma­tion that we do have. With all health con­cerns, men should seek the ad­vice of their doc­tor ear­ly to min­imise their risk of chron­ic dis­ease, which we know will not on­ly im­prove their health and well-be­ing over­all, but will re­duce their risk of be­ing se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by COVID-19.

Da­ta and Ar­ti­cle Source

Men and COVID-19

https://in­te­grisok.com/re­sources/on-your-health

https://news­room.cleve­land­clin­ic.org/2020/09/02/cleve­land-clin­ic-cop­ing-with-covid-sur­vey-il­lus­trates-the-men­tal-and-phys­i­cal-toll-the-pan­dem­ic-is-tak­ing-on-men/

https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/im­pact-nih-re­search/our-health


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