An invitation to death by COVID-19?
How long have doctors been warning us about the risks of obesity?
Long before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, they were cautioning against a dangerous epidemic tied to our visibly spreading waistlines.
“Will All Americans Become Overweight or Obese? Estimating the Progression and Cost of the US Obesity Epidemic,” researchers from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health titled a 2008 study of our fatness.
If the trend that begun in the 1970s and continued through the 2000s continued, the study warned, “by 2030, 86.3 percent of adults will be overweight or obese; and 51.1 percent obese….Total health‐care costs attributable to obesity/overweight would double every decade to $860.7 (to) $956.9 billion by 2030, accounting for 16-18 percent of total U.S. health‐care costs. We continue to move away from the Healthy People 2010 objectives.”
The scientists unfortunately failed to predict how nature would exploit our behavior with a microscopic pathogen which is now blowing health care costs through the ceiling, killing tens of thousands in the Western world, and threatening to make a shambles of the U.S. economy.
“…The elephant in the room is that the baseline general health in many western populations was already in a horrendous state to begin with. In the UK and USA more than 60 percent of adults are overweight or obese. How is this relevant to COVID-19?
“OBESITY, THE REAL KILLER BEHIND COVID
“It is well known in the medical literature that excess body fat induces immune dysregulation and chronic inflammation which is directly linked to the cytokine storm that is responsible for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome seen in influenza and other respiratory viruses.”
But on the subject of COVID-19 and obesity, he is in lockstep with the data and rest of the medical community even if they don’t put the issue in terms as blunt as those used by Mahotra.
Noting studies from France, where obese patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 faced a seven-time greater risk of ending up on a ventilator, and New York, where obese individuals who contracted the disease were nearly two to more than three-and-a-half times more likely to end up in an intensive care unit (ICU), English doctors today warned that people worldwide need to be “encouraged to improve their lifestyle to lessen risk both in the current and subsequent waves of COVID-19.”
“In addition to increasing activity levels, there should be improved messaging on better diet, focusing on simpler advice to help people adopt sustainable changes,” they wrote in a journal of the American Heart Association. “This is particularly challenging with current stay-at-home rules limiting activity levels – the ‘lockdown cost of weight gain.’ Even more worrying, the resultant economic downturn may worsen obesity, especially in the most vulnerable, a risk that governments need to address when we come out of the current pandemic. Indeed, this pandemic has highlighted that more, not less,
must be done to tackle and prevent obesity in our societies for the prevention of chronic disease and greater adverse reactions to viral pandemics.”
“Although the reasons for why obese people are suffering such severe COVID-19 and dying more than other groups are not clear, the researchers believe it could be because they have reduced lung function and possibly more inflammation in adipose tissue – the fatty tissue under the skin and around internal organs.
“According to the researchers, this might contribute to an enhanced ‘cytokine storm’ – a potentially life-threatening overreaction of the body’s immune reaction which causes harm.”
Cytokines are proteins that move through the body to allow immune cells to communicate.
Defenders turned enemies
“In systemic viral infections, cytokines can induce an inflammatory response which is beneficial until their production becomes uncontrolled.”
What has been happening in the case of COVID-19 patients is that when the cytokines storm out of control they create so much inflammation that the pressure of swelling causes organs to start failing, which is often fatal.
People with what is considered a normal weight have a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9. A BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered “overweight.” Over 30 is obese. Over 40 is morbidly obese.
Though obesity appears to have become a factor in COVID-19 deaths, age remains the real killer. Most of the dead are beyond middle age or older. Ninety percent of the dead in New York City were 45 or older with more than 72 percent age 65 or older, according to data compiled by Worldometers. In China, where Nthe SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began, most of the dead were even older.
In Italy, the average of those who died was 79.5 years, according to the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. In all countries reporting age-related mortality, case fatalities rates are generally at or under 1 percent below age 60 and then quickly climb to more than 20 percent for those over age 80.
Co-morbidity
Older people are vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 because of their declining strength with age and the so-called “co-morbidities” – high-blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and more – that tend to accumulate as people get old.
But there are an increasing number of doctors thinking obesity might be the key co-morbidity problem for the much smaller number of younger people the disease is killing.
Lighter and Anna Stachel, the assistant director of the Department of Infection Prevention and Control at Langone, promptly organized a study of 3,615 patients under the age of 60 who tested positive for COVID-19. The results showed:
- Patients with a BMI of 30-34 were twice as likely to get admitted to the hospital or to be admitted to acute care.
- Patients with a BMI of 35 or higher were twice as likely to be admitted to the hospital and three times as likely to end up in the intensive care unit.
“Patients who are obese are coming into the emergency department and presenting for medical care more because they are sicker,” Lighter told WebMD. “Once here, those with a higher BMI are also more likely to be admitted and more likely to end up in the ICU.”
So we’ve been warned yet again. Will anyone listen this time?
Categories: News
Steve-O, I expected from Commie’s, but wanted to get your thoughts. Which carries more weight, an inflated pandemic or the U.S. Constitution?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/de-blasio-nypd-commish-no-protests-allowed-in-nyc
Bryan,
I don’t know if the wholesale banning of protests is allowed under any SCOTUS backed ruling, I seriously, seriously doubt it…pandemic or not. I would suggest that every New Yorker should protest their mayor right now for claiming that he can’t be protested! My guess is that this will be one of the items AG Barr was talking about needing to be on the lookout for. De Blasio certainly has the ability to ban certain things, but if one person wants to protest him, he can’t ban that. If he bans groups 10 people or more from gathering within a certain number of feet of each other, say six feet, then he can do that…the thing to remember is there are limits to these mandates and they are not wholesale removal of our rights as Americans. If I show up with a group of 9 people to protest and we are following all of the social distancing guidelines, why shouldn’t we be allowed to protest? And if you show up in the same general area with 9 other people but don’t mix with my with group and we all follow the general mandates, why shouldn’t you be able to protest? We, as citizens have a responsibility to each other, unfortunately many of us don’t take that responsibility seriously enough and that opens the door for idiots to divide us, idiots like De Blasio.
Read today that for every Covid “death” hospitals and funeral homes get Federal $$$. That explains a lot of those fudged death numbers.
It also explains a lot of real death numbers resulting from policies such as gov Cuomo sending covid positive seniors back to their elder care facilities where they would not only be certain to die, but also result in mass casualties as the virus ripped through the facility’s elderly population like a scythe through wheat. This is nothing short of mass murder, and when you examine the facts nation wide a similar pattern begins to emerge.
A WeeBee’s super egg cheeseburger and a chocolate shake ought to cleanse my mental palette of this horrible information. I’m talking the real chocolate shake here made with real ice cream. Goodness measured in its ability to start a cytokine storm just by having cupped such a delight in my puffy, lipid engorged hands.
Onion rings are a vegetable and the rest of ’em are what my food eats.
Mr. Stine, your diet change and newly found conservatism (clarity of thought) are quite possible linked. Please continue the raw food intake. Bryan, perhaps a few more potato chips for you.
Been eating french fries with the Big Mac, does that count?
This made me chuckle:)
It’s the carbs. The food pyramid has been wrong for nearly 60 years. Lo carb / hi fat works nicely. AK Natives didn’t start getting the western diseases (hi BP / diabetes type II / heart disease / a variety of cancers / etc) until flour and sugar showed up in the Bush. Gary Taubes has a pretty good explanation. Worth you time to look into. Cheers –
The key to health is maintaining the health of our Lymphatic System, something which the Allopathic Community rarely discusses.
The Lymphatic System is the “Sewer System” of the body…it cleans out the junk and removes toxins from the body.
When you are Obese…I.E. “Congested” throughout your tissues and organs, this Lymphatic System backs up with toxins and problems such as Lymphomas develop.
Foods like milk and cheese are acid producing and add congestion to the body, this is why many mothers have said “do not drink milk when you have a cold or flu”.
Foods like fruits and leafy vegetables are alkaline forming and increases elimination from the body.
Back when this whole flu “plannedemic” started, I increased my raw food intake and avoided foods known to cause acidosis in the body.
Most naturopaths recommend an 80/20 diet that includes mostly raw fruits and veggies with a smaller amount of lightly cooked foods like baked potatoes, rice, quinoa and steamed vegetables.
Basically when the Allopathic Doctors say “your immune system” they are really referring to the Lymphatic System….something that western medicine knows very little about.
We do not need dangerous chemicals in the form of vaccines to fight viruses (millions of viruses pass through our bodies every day) all we need is the proper diet and proper exercise with proper rest to maintain a healthy weight.
Steve, thank you for the well reasoned addition to Craig´s excellent article. My wife postulated that your newly found clarity of thought (Conservatism) was due to a mild TBI resulting from a ski accident. I personally wonder if your diet change is responsible. Please continue to increase your raw food intake. Bryan might actually benefit from a bit of acidosis.
The pickleball courts have reopened, I’m off to play, mask and all!