Originally posted by shunyadragon
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In any case, I'm not arguing that it's impossible there are regional differences in immune responses. Genomic data indicates that the two things that have had the strongest influence on human evolution are diet and disease. It's entirely possible some of the existing immune differences will influence the response to coronaviruses (the Nature paper you've brought into this discussion seems to have been an example of this).
But the lineages that infect humans are all less than 5,000 years old. They appear to have had multiple geographic origins. Animal coronaviruses are found in species that are everywhere that humans are, like mice and domesticated animals. I just don't see any reason to suspect that these viruses have been regional enough to drive regional evolution.
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