Are low testosterone and sex differences in immune responses causing mass hysteria during the coronavirus pandemic?

Link to article in Science & Philosophy journal

Roy Barzilai

 

Abstract

By integrating the entire body of research in human sexual dynamics, immune responses, and sociocultural behavior, we can conclude that the mass hysteria our society is currently experiencing originates in our evolved psychological adaptations to pandemic conditions[1]. A lack of hormonal balance[2], due to a collapse in testosterone levels, may cause a disproportionate immune response that leads to the destruction of our cherished sociopolitical institutions—the very institutions that are design to protect human liberty and prosperity. What is playing out at a societal level is similar to an excessive immune response that causes the body to attack itself: decreased testosterone causing the kind of auto-immune response that is more prevalent in females.

Keywords: sex hormones, cultural evolution, behavioral immune system.

 

 

1. Introduction

In a short period of only six months since the Coronavirus Pandemic, originating in China, hit the Western world, the global hysteria and panic response has reached unprecedented levels: Mass lockdowns have infringed on once sacred individual rights, which are being trampled on by increasingly authoritarian government decrees. A coordinated global economic collapse has pushed unemployment levels to 1930s Great Depression rates of over 20% worldwide.

 

2. Political Polarization

This has also further stirred up the growing momentous trend toward political polarization between conservatives/libertarians and liberal progressives in their views of the severity of the danger caused by the virus and ideas about adequate responses. Republicans and libertarians view the threat as minor and the response disproportional, causing economic and social devastation. Many conservatives are calling the cure worse than the disease. Democrat liberals, on the other hand, want to take further, severe, nation-wide measures to counter this perceived danger until there is a vaccine developed, which may require years.

A recent article on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) warns that such partisanship exceeds public health concerns when it comes to choices about social distancing. Reviewing almost half a million responses, the researchers concluded that “rampant partisanship” increased in the March 4–June 6 survey period and created “the largest obstacle to the social distancing most experts see as critical to limiting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.”[3]

Moreover, these researchers cite the increase in Republican partisanship particularly: “All else equal, the relative importance of partisanship for the increasing (un)willingness of Republicans to engage in social distancing highlights the challenge that politics poses for public health.”[4] Hence, liberals view conservatives as reckless and selfish, seeking economic growth at the cost of human life, while conservatives view their counterparts as hysterical to the point of destroying the political and economic basis for Western prosperity, causing a depressive economic environment.

 

3. Sex hormones and behavioral immune system

As my previous work on political polarization and sex differences suggests, I would like to present how sex hormones cause this effect of cultural divide and political strife. It is been the thesis of my work that low testosterone levels are causing the radical feminization of Western culture and a declining social trend over the last 70 years. Since the growth of liberty and capitalism in the 1950s, this decline has reached an extreme in 2020. Low testosterone is at the root of the anti-masculine bias of liberal-socialist politics, but it has reached a pinnacle with the current hysterical response to this health crises. To understand this phenomenon we need to delve into the evolution of the human immune system and how it is shaped by sex hormones.

Females have a much stronger immune response than males because females carry the burden of reproduction and raising infants, and hence their well-being beginning at the age of fertility (beginning at 12 -14 years old) is more essential for the creation of future generations. Testosterone can actually have the effect of suppressing the male immune system relative to females in general.[5] However, this is a double-edged sword, as the strong female immune response can also cause the body to attack itself, which leads to many catastrophic auto-immune diseases;[6] nevertheless, more men die from the coronavirus pandemic. A study in April 2020 of 5,700 COVID-19 patients showed that 60% were male and that male mortality rates were higher than female.[7] Likewise, a more recent study indicated that with age increases, male deaths increase at a higher rate than female deaths.[8]

Furthermore, a 2018 scientific discovery found a new link between immune cells and the differentiation in utero of sex traits, further supporting the connection between how our immune systems operate in relation to biological sex.[9] The great gender divine in our immune system also manifests itself in human behavior, according to an evolutionary biology theory of a behavioral immune system. The critical need for human defense against pathogens, including disease, has led our species to not only develop chemical immune responses but also “proactive behavioural mechanisms that inhibit contact with pathogens in the first place.”[10] Marc Schaller writes:

 

This behavioural immune system comprises psychological processes that infer infection risk from perceptual cues, and that respond to these perceptual cues through the activation of aversive emotions, cognitions and behavioural impulses….These processes have important implications for human social cognition and social behaviour—including implications for social gregariousness, person perception, intergroup prejudice, mate preferences, sexual behaviour and conformity.[11]

 

4. Conclusion

By integrating this entire body of research in human sexual dynamics, immune responses, and sociocultural behavior, we can conclude that the mass hysteria our society is currently experiencing originates in our evolved psychological adaptations to pandemic conditions. However, a lack of hormonal balance, due to a collapse in testosterone levels, may cause a disproportionate immune response that leads to the destruction of our cherished sociopolitical institutions—the very institutions that are design to protect human liberty and prosperity. What is playing out at a societal level is similar to an excessive immune response that causes the body to attack itself: decreased testosterone causing the kind of auto-immune response that is more prevalent in females.

During the period of the American founders, Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” In this, Franklin was expressing the masculine, more high-testosterone, risk-taking culture that led to more than two centuries of Western prosperity. The current auto-immune attack on our own society in the form of “rampant partisanship” and division along with the heavy-handed government restrictions will depress liberty and destroy our society from the inside out like the ravages on the body of an MS patient if we do not recognize the disease and work together toward a cure.

 

References

[1]   Barzilai, R. (2020). Low Solar Activity, Winter Flu Conditions, Pandemics and Sex Wars: A Holistic View of Human Evolution. Science & Philosophy, 8(1). Doi: 10.23756/sp.v8i1.514

[2]      Barzilai, R. (2019). Solar cycles, light, sex hormones and the life cycles of civilization: Toward integrated chronobiology. Science & Philosophy, 7(2). doi: 10.23756/sp.v7i2.483

[3]    Joshua Clinton, Jon Cohen, John S. Lapinski, and Marc Trussler, “Partisan Pandemic: How Partisanship and Public Health Concerns Affect Individuals’ Social Distancing During COVID-19,” SSRN (July 9, 2020): http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3633934.

[4]    Joshua Clinton, Jon Cohen, John S. Lapinski, and Marc Trussler, “Partisan Pandemic: How Partisanship and Public Health Concerns Affect Individuals’ Social Distancing During COVID-19,” SSRN (July 9, 2020): http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3633934.

[5]       Benjamin C. Trumble et al., “Associations Between Male Testosterone and Immune Function inaA Pathogenically Stressed Forager-Horticultural Population,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 161, no. 3 (2016): 494–505. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23054.

[6]       Maunil K. Desai1 and Roberta Diaz Brinton, “Autoimmune Disease in Women: Endocrine Transition and Risk across the Lifespan,” Frontiers in Endocrinology 10 (2019): 265, https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2019.00265.

[7]     Laura Geggel, “Why are More Men Dying from COVID-19?” Live Science, April 28, 2020, https://www.livescience.com/why-covid-19-more-severe-men.html.

[8]       Roberto Pastor-Barriuso et al., “SARS-CoV-2 Infection Fatality Risk in a Nationwide Seroepidemiological Study,” medRXiv (August 7, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.06.20169722.

[9]       Kathryn M. Lenz, Lindsay A. Pickett, Christopher L. Wright, Katherine T. Davis, Aarohi Joshi, and Margaret M. McCarthy, “Mast Cells in the Developing Brain Determine Adult Sexual Behavior,” The Journal of Neuroscience 38, no. 37 (2018): 8044, https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1176-18.2018.

[10]      Mark Schaller, “The Behavioural Immune System and the Psychology of Human Sociality,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society    B Biological Sciences 366, no. 1583 (2011): 3418–3426, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2011.0029.

[11]     Mark Schaller, “The Behavioural Immune System and the Psychology of Human Sociality,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society    B Biological Sciences 366, no. 1583 (2011): 3418–3426, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2011.0029.