I have been observing the data flowing from coronavirus infection in Italy and I have noticed that the distribution of infections by gender points out a prevalence in males higher than women, as you can see in the graph below:
This data might be more interesting if you consider that the virus attacks more frequently elder patients. And in the group of age > 65 years old, the ratio among men and women is 0.75: it mans that women are more prevalent than men. See the graph below:
So, being the men less than women, the frequency of disease in men is even bigger than the reported prevalence!
Might this huge difference be in correlation with Hygiene Difference in Men and Women?
“We need to make sure men don’t feel too macho to worry about germs”, told Rosie Frasso, Program Director of public health at Thomas Jefferson University. Frasso points out that traditionally women and men have different experiences regarding hygiene, making women more conscious of germs. Women has been always more engaged in meal prep, house cleaning, diaper changing. Women and men have different experiences in the bathroom, making women more conscious of germs: “Women are dealing with seats!”
Women wash their hands significantly more often, use soap more often, and wash their hands somewhat longer than men,” according to a 2013 Michigan State University field study conducted by research assistants who observed nearly 4,000 people in restrooms around East Lansing, Michigan. The study found 14.6 per cent of men did not wash their hands at all after using the bathroom and 35.1 per cent wet their hands but did not use soap, compared to 7.1 per cent and 15.1 per cent of women, respectively.
In 2010 a study by the American Cleaning Institute and the American Microbiology Society found that men are less likely to wash their hands even after petting an animal, handling food, coughing or sneezing.
A 2016 paper by the Los Alamos National Laboratory found that Women are more likely than men to practice non-pharmaceutical behaviors, things like hand washing, face mask use and avoiding crowds,” said Kelly Moran, one of the authors of the study. Even when the researchers tested their findings against factors such as culture or a country’s level of development, they found that the gender gap persisted.
This is true also for the ora hygiene. Alcouffe found that women’s “spontaneous” oral hygiene is higher than that of men.
A 2006 research paper by the sociology department at Sweden’s Götoborg University, that reviewed a number of studies on the perception of risk found that men consistently “express less concern” for a range of threats. “Women are more oriented toward home and family, mainly perceiving risks as threats to their family and their home,” the study states. “Men’s concerns were to a higher degree related to their working life, e.g., risks of unemployment, and economic problems.”
Women experience disgust more frequently than men due to fundamental evolutionary distinctions, a new study has found. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine surveyed more than 2,500 people online, asking them to rate their levels of disgust at 75 potential scenarios ranging from ‘no disgust’ to ‘extreme disgust’. These included scenarios related to poor hygiene, such as body odour and un-flushed toilets; animal contamination; out-of-date foods and risky sexual behaviours. According to lead author Val Curtis, these scenarios provoke disgust due to an ancestral inclination to avoid what we believe might cause infection.
Machismo is falling down.
BRAIN IN LABOR 