Studies had yet to fully account for factors that may distort the true estimate of biological sex-related risk – like age, menstrual status, comorbidities, vaccination status, variants of concern, severity of acute illness and differential engagement in health care. Some studies relied upon relatively small sample sizes or those lacking ethnic or racial diversity.

ummmm. yeah, that’s a pretty glaring limitation to this study. Pink-collar professions are going to be at waaay higher risk, and it’s not just healthcare. The kind of children you can’t teach and care for over a video screen are exactly the age group of children who will wipe snot on you while sneezing in your face.

And even on just the healthcare front, nurses got hit harder than any other healthcare profession because we’re basically the one healthcare profession that can do almost anything that needs to be done at a patient’s bedside with the exception of some very specific procedures (and some places even have nurses placing things like PICC lines). Healthcare is segmented into so many other little tasks like phlebotomy or physical or respiratory therapy and while a nurse will never do anything as well as a specialist or be able to do more advanced procedures in those specialties, we can do most things well enough. We’re like the swiss army knives of healthcare so when PPE was scarce and the decision came to decide which one person was going to wear that one gown for an entire 12 hour shift it was pretty much always a nurse. Any task that a specialty technician might normally do that could be done by a nurse was then almost exclusively done by a nurse. And while men are getting into nursing more and more they still only account for around 12% of the total workforce.