Well now I am genuinely confused. The issue is whether Covid affects men more, which you dispute. And by "affects" we can take to mean that men get more serious cases of Covid and are also more likely to die.
But then you cite this:
And in that article, they write:
According to the Global Health 50-50 initiative nearly every country is now reporting significantly higher COVID-19-related mortality rates in males than in females as of June 4. Yet, current data suggest similar infection rates for men and women. In other words, while men and women are being infected with COVID-19 at similar rates, a significantly higher proportion of men succumb to the disease than women, across groups of similar age. Why is it then that more men are dying from COVID-19? Or rather, should we be asking why are more women surviving?
So, you seem to agree with me and Lineker's Legs that Covid has increased mortality in men versus women? I'm very puzzled.
And then you point to the globalhealth 5050 data base saying that
But that same database provides tons of information by country, showing that the vast majority of countries both present sex disaggregated data and that males die at a higher rate than females. As you see below, the right most column is the proportion of deaths as a ratio of male to female so any number over 1 means more males are dying. And you can see that only a few countries (Slovenia, Finland) have a lower than 1 ratio and only five countries have a ratio of exactly 1, whereas the rest of the countries have a ratio above 1, indicating more deaths for males relative to females. So I'm still very confused by your point.
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And then you move onto smoking as a cofactor in causing more male deaths than female deaths, since in many countries there are more male smokers than female smokers. But if you look at Sweden it has a death ratio of 1.7 deaths, but in Sweden (in 2016) smoking is both low overall and equal among men and women (about 19%). See this chart below. Same goes for Denmark: smoking among men and women is equal, but the covid death ratio is 1.7.
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I also find your logic regarding cofactors unconvincing. Even if men and women have equal infection rates, this doesn't rule out the idea that men get more severe cases of Covid and are more likely to die from it. In other words, being a male is a cofactor in explaing the sex-biased death rates, which is the same thing as saying women have some intrinsic biological property that makes them survive, which is the same thing as saying that men, by virtue of being male, are more likely to die. So, I'm not exactly sure what your point is. Even if men smoke more than women, if they get Covid, they die from Covid, so exactly what is your point regarding smoking? They are not dying from lung cancer or COPD.
Then you go on to write this below, which is difficult to interpret. You seem to imply that you are reading sources (no one is questioning your reading ability since this is an internet forum) and that we are "sad" because we have asked you to offer evidence. But this is exactly what you need to do. The data, as shown quite clearly above, show that men die more than women. You dispute this. So the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence of your case. And the evidence you linked to above was not convincing and in fact supported the very point you were trying to argue against.
You end with another claim of "COULD", to which I can only refer you back to my post about the burden of proof and the fallacy of absence of evidence, which in your case is basically saying, "I can't provide strong counter evidence, but it COULD be different in the future."
So, to sum up:
--53 out of 60 countries have a higher male death rate; and these are data taken from a link you provided suggesting that most countries don't report sex-aggregated data.
--Smoking may be a cofactor (but many studies have controlled for this), but this doesn't negate the fact that males die more often than females from Covid, and it doesn't explain why in countries where smoking rates are equal among males and females there remains a male-biased death rate.
--The burden of proof rests on you to show how and why you feel the male-biased death rates are wrong, and this is because the established pattern is that male-biased death rates exist at present.
--Saying "things could change in the future" is an empty and specious statement that is so universally applicable that it could applies to any dispute or circumstance, including the fact that male deaths rates might increase rather than decrease.
