Covid: Don’t be too fat
Common sense should lead you to think that if you are unhealthy and you then contract a potentially serious disease, the symptoms might be more severe and you might pay the ultimate price.
The simplest definition of “healthy” is a disease-free body. The definition has changed. In 1948, the World Health Organization said: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” By that definition, who do we know are in “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being” or healthy?
We have gone from healthy—meaning waking up in the morning and being able to say, “I feel strong and well”—to needing to reach for some Dalai Lama-like level of enlightenment.
We live in an age of “relativism” where some sort of absolute definition has given way to personal interpretation. “Relativism is the view that standards of reasoning are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them.”
In other words, we all get to define “healthy” by our own standards. There was a time not too long ago when telling a person “you drink too much,” “you smoke too much,” or “you eat too much” was considered a show of your love. Now, telling people that they are overweight is practically a violation of their human rights.
“Being Overweight Doesn’t Mean You’re Unhealthy!” write doctors Benjamin C. Wedro and Melissa Conrad Stöppler. PHD candidate Jamie Khoot at the University of York Centre for Women’s Studies writes, “Fat people do not need your concerns about their health.”
The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) has a 200-word mission statement “to help liberate fat people and allow them to live their lives to the fullest every day,” but never mentions losing weight.
Last September, NAAFA wrote: “A large study on the risk of hospitalization, ventilation, or death among US veteran patients with Covid-19 finds that neither high body mass index, Black race, Hispanic ethnicity...were associated with mortality.”
Yet Greater Good Magazine: Science-based Insights For A Meaningful
Life says “Why Is Covid-19 Killing So Many Black Americans? The answer, according to researchers, is racism.” “Even though I focus on Black and Latinx, we’re also certainly seeing disturbing trends in Native American populations.” Black Americans were 2.7 times more likely to be hospitalized than white patients.
A recent study that shows that 88 percent of total global Covid deaths is in countries where more than 50 percent of the population is overweight. These countries also saw increased hospitalization and ICU admissions.
The World Obesity Federation findings were “near-uniform across the globe,” according to the Washington Post, noting that after old age, increased body weight is the second greatest predictor of poor outcomes.
In the US, obesity rates by race are: Non-hispanic Black—40.7 percent, American Indian/alaska Native—38 percent, and Hispanic—35 percent.
On February 5, 2021 in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers of Medicine, results from 17 studies of 543,399 patients in as many as 47 countries showed that the higher risk of Covid death in obese patients ranged from 9 percent higher to 378 percent higher factoring in age and pre-existing conditions. The numbers speak for themselves.