Good morning. Why has Covid’s toll been surprisingly low across much of Africa and Asia? It’s one of the biggest mysteries about Covid-19: Why has the death toll been relatively low across much of Africa and Asia? The virus has killed a fraction of as many people on those continents — despite their relative lack of resources — as it has in Europe or the U.S.: This isn’t how public health emergencies usually work. They tend to inflict their worst damage in poorer places, which is indeed what’s happening within the U.S., where the toll has been higher in many minority and low-income communities. Globally, though, Covid has been different. In a recent New Yorker article, the physician and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee described it as “an epidemiological whodunit.” Other than in Mukherjee’s article, the pattern has received surprisingly little attention in the U.S. It’s one of those […]