Individuals with high slack are significantly rewarded in other ways outside of group contexts. For example, being self-employed with a flexible schedule means that I get to save a bunch of money by flying on Wednesdays and I can do activities during the week when they are less crowded. Financial slack lowers stress, enables one to take advantage of more opportunities, and take greater risks.
These benefits accrued to those with slack may provide some justification for why it isn’t rewarded as much as one might expect in a group context.
I emailed this comment and my reply to Elodie Ghedin, a molecular parasitologist and virologist at NYU for her thoughts on this. Here is her reply (posted with permission):
“Thanks for reaching out.
To my knowledge, there has not been an association of PCP with COVID-19. The percentages compared in that comment are not really comparing the same thing.
In severe COVID-19 cases there is indeed pneumonia but that’s a general term indicating inflammation due to the virus itself. It can however be followed by an opportunistic infection, mostly from bacteria.
At first blush SARS-CoV-2 is not doing anything all that different to the immune system than any other acute virus infection. ”