Still staying home.

my blood type was. And now that I think about it, I really wonder why that is.

Hubs and I are O's so really happy we're less at risk of severe issues, but my sister who has the already scarred lungs is type A - the bad kind. So I still have to be extra careful for her, but it really changes nothing because I was already masking and staying at home most of the time and being socially distanced with a mask when not.

It's very similar to the way skin color was selected for. Dark skin is protective in sunny places, but it doesn't let enough light through for Vitamin D synthesis in cloudy places.

A blood type that's protective against a certain parasite in one place might make someone more susceptible to a pathogen in another place.

Maybe in the next pandemic people with type A blood won't get as sick.

Yes, there will be more pandemics, especially as the world warms and human populations increase.

Some background: We receive two copies of a particular gene, one from each parent. If you have type A blood, you might have received an A allele (an allele is just a version of the gene, when there's more than one variant) from both parents, meaning that you are actually an AA. Or, on the other hand, you might have received an A allele from one parent and an O from the other, which would mean that you're actually an AO. Since the O allele is recessive, if you're an AO, you still type as A.

So for all these people who are doing poorly, are they all AAs? Does having the O allele provide some protection (as, with the APOE gene, having an E2 allele helps mitigate against the ill effects of the E4)?

Just something I think about when I should be doing something productive.