With a reportedly effective vaccine for COVID-19 promising to help torpedo the largest pandemic in 100 years, is America’s biggest health problem soon to be ignored once again?
But first another question: What do these five countries – Vietnam, Bangladesh, Timor Leste, India and Cambodia – have in common besides warm climates that tend to favor most diseases and widespread poverty?
The average annual income in Cambodia is $1,480, according to World Data. It’s $2,540 in Vietnam with the other countries between these two.
These are countries where life is, in general, harder than in this one, but they also happen to be countries with very low death rates from COVID-19.
India’s death rate is about a ninth that of the U.S. as a whole and about a twentieth that of New Jersey, the U.S. leader in per capita deaths. It is about an eighteenth of New York, a sixteenth of Massachusetts, a 15th of Connecticut and North Dakota, and a 14th of four other states that have helped to drive up the U.S. death toll.
Two of those states – Mississippi and Louisiana – are among the nation’s top five states for obesity rates, according to the Brittanica Group. But compared to Vietnam, Bangladesh, Timor Leste, India and Cambodia, every U.S. state is fat.
Brittanica reports the country’s skinniest state as Colorado, where only 23 percent of residents are obese.
These are the world’s five skinniest countries, and the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 isn’t doing to them nearly what it is doing to the heftier, better off Western world where many are falling victim to their profligate lifestyles.
Study after study has found obesity a serious risk factor for death from COVID-19.
The big picture
A peer-reviewed, meta-analysis of COVID-19 studies published prior to September found the obese had a 48 percent greater chance of death from the pandemic disease than the non-obese.
The data should not, however, have come as a surprise.
As Popkin, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor, admitted in an interview with JAMA, “we’ve known for some time that obese individuals’ immune systems are impaired. We also know that there’s a lot of metabolic dysfunction that goes on with obesity, and that the adipose tissues become inflamed quite readily. So those three things we’ve had some sense of. They’re very much linked to the [underlying COVID-19] risks of diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and kidney and liver disease. So those are known pathways.”
English and Chinese researchers involved in an earlier meta-analysis of the accumulating data on the danger of COVID-19 to the obese recognized that even before the new virus appeared obesity was “a global disease with at least 2.8 million people dying each year as a result of being overweight or obese.”
Sadly, SARS-CoV-2 – the newly evolved virus that causes COVID-19 – wasn’t and isn’t the only form of death haunting the overweight.
“The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008 US dollars; the medical cost for people who have obesity was $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.”
The costs have only gone up since 2008 as Americans have responded to the obesity epidemic the easy way – by letting their belts out another notch.
The percentage of Americans who are fat has been increasing so steadily for so long that overweight now borders on the new normal.
One-hundred and ninety-seven-pound Dorothy Bradley, who featured in a March 1954 Life magazine article titled “The Plague of Overweight” really doesn’t look all that heavy compared to Hunter McGrady, Sports Illustrated’s “curviest” bikini model who is reported to weigh in at 238 pounds.
On the Yahoo! website, McGrady was praised as an “amazing body-positive role model.”
Of Bradley, Life reported, that “embarrassed at (a) shop because she wears a size 40, Dorothy tries on new dress. A friend encouragingly points out that dieting has reduced waistline by two sizes.”
The story ended with a photo of McGrady after documenting her weight-loss efforts:
Shifting standards
No mainstream news editor in America today would touch a story like the one Life did on McGrady 66 years ago. The story then was about “the most serious health problem in the U.S. today…obesity.”
The story hasn’t changed since, but attitudes have. Obesity is now among the many things Americans don’t talk about in polite company even if it is killing them.
The annual number of excess deaths due to obesity in the U.S. each year has been put somewhere between 112,000 and 400,000. And this year obesity has played an undeniable role in helping to push COVID-19 deaths in the country to 299,177 as of today, according to the counter run by the John Hopkins University of Medicine.
The costs of the obesity epidemic were staggering before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The latter only drove costs higher.
The pandemic is expected to end at some point. And the obesity epidemic?
The future doesn’t look good.
Childhood obesity, a precursor for problems as an adult, has slowed this decade but continues to creep upward. It is way beyond any historic precedent.
Those who reach obesity in childhood seldom slim down as adults. The 5 percent childhood obesity rate of the 1970s grew into the giant obesity problem of the 2000s.
What is the 19.3 percent rate of 2019 likely to mean 30 or 40 years on, and what can be done about it?
American children today face the same problem as so many American adults: They eat too much and exercise too little.
Most of the population enjoys eating and finds exercise too much like work. The result is predictable.
Weight gain like weight loss is as simple as calories in and calories out. Yes, some people are naturally skinny because they are genetically driven by smaller appetites or burn more calories when sitting still.
But for most people, the physiological reality is as simple as the CDC outlines:
Weight gain works the same way in reverse. Combining reduced physical activity with increased numbers of calories creates a calorie surplus that mammals deal with by storing fat.
That’s good if you’re an Alaska brown bear. It’s not good if you’re a human. It was slowly killing people before COVID-19. Now it’s more quickly killing people if they catch the pandemic disease.
And COVID might be making the obesity epidemic that preceded it worse even as knowledgeable people worry more about their weight because of the disease.
If their working from home means getting out of bed, going to a computer, and spending the day sitting there before going back to bed, they’re headed for trouble.
Obesity was a health threat before the pandemic, and it will continue as a health threat after the pandemic. It just happens that during the pandemic it is an oversize health threat.
Categories: Commentary
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9060697/Alaska-healthcare-worker-suffered-allergic-reaction-Pfizers-coronavirus-vaccine.html
Just heard today that another acquaintance here in Alaska has died from a heart attack in his fifties & this sort of thing goes on everyday across America in spite of all the Coronavirus hype.
Not much more to say other than enjoy your life, eat healthy & exercise outdoors every single day!
What is funny is I hear, and not kidding, “but a heart attack is a result of a Covid death”. Kind of like all the Democrat%Chinese spy scandals popping up all over and the deflection that follows – “but the GOP did this or that”. Such criminal fraud.
KUWAIT BMI INDEX RANK IN WORLD: 6, COVID DEATH PER 1M POPULATION: 212 -RANK IN WORLD: 71
USA BMI INDEX RANK IN WORLD: 20, COVID DEATH PER 1M POPULATION: 928 – RANK IN WORLD: 12
Based on this I posit that Americans have crammed more low density fat into their brains than Kuwaitis excepting perhaps the Swedes, oh wait!
SWEDEN BMI INDEX RANK IN WORLD: 103 (tied with five others) COVID DEATH PER 1M POPULATION: 742 – RANK IN WORLD: 25
BMI is not the problem here; it’s rank stupidity. BUT, BUT FREE-DUMBS!
Mr monkfelonious: Thank you
Average IQ’s:
Kuwait: 79
USA: 97
Sweden: 97
Well ycooper, you apparently show IQ has nothing to do with intelligence.
Mr monkfelonious: Maybe, or maybe not much to do with emotional maturity or wisdom. Kuwait is one of the world’s richest countries per capita. Maybe they eat real food, I mean actually nourishing food.
Thank you. Also, our food supply is poisoned.
Ycooper you are totally right. Said that awhile back, “what if China put small amounts of carcinogenics in our food supply that over years would drive up cancer rates, deaths, and put an obvious strain on our healthcare, well, in ADDITION to Covid. Also, I bought 3 bulbs of good looking garlic in net packaging. Never gave it a thought. Was listening to a chef and he said “check your garlic, 80% of it comes from China, which uses chemicals and bleech on it”. Even said to watch some clip on YouTube about it. Sure enough, I looked at my beautiful white garlic and the packaging said “Grown in China”.
Poison is right.
Bryan, good comments. China has no good plans for us. And regarding their garlic, they force prisoners to shuck their garlic until their finger nails come off and their fingers are bleeding. There is, or was, undercover video of it on YouTube at one time. But now YouTube is censoring all sorts of things.
Bryan,should be able to find bulbs from Gilroy ca,
fairly easy.In theory they arent smothered in junk
Dave, Mc, you are correct. I normally don’t get them, but was in a pinch and grabbed a cluster and walla. I know “everything” is made in China, but didnt even think about a few bulbs of garlic. Bit of an eye openner.
Even some of the ones stamped as being made in Gilroy are simply imported by a company in Gilroy. I said it about a week ago on another article, but if you have Netflix you do not want to watch the series Rotten and specifically the “Garlic Breath” episode. I will never buy peeled or chopped garlic again and I will never buy Chinese garlic again.
Steve-O,
great.
Back in the day I used to get seed garlic out of a place in Okanagen country in Wa.
Don’t remember the name, but you could also buy for consumption too, but pricey.
But the variety was locally raised established from strains around the world.
I remember your post, but didn’t realize it dealt with imposters too.The Chinese own the vast majority of the supply around the world.
Yeah, seems like your best bet is local local local…if you can find it, or better yet grow it yourself. If you have to buy it make sure it at least says USA, California, or as you said Gilroy then you stand a chance of getting what you think you are getting but never buy the peeled or chopped stuff even though it is so much easier. There are video clips in that show of Chinese prisoners peeling the cloves with their teeth because they have worn their fingernails down to the point they cannot peel anymore cloves by hand.
Basically, if you are not buying your produce from organic farmers who are locally certified, then you have no idea what is getting sprayed on it.
Think Asia is bad, take a look at Mexico…where do you think all that DDT went when it was banned in America?
Glycophosphates may be banned in California, but not in Mexico which is where a large amount of U.S. produce comes from.
Is there a reason for all the rising cases of cancer in America…you bet there is.
Steve-O, I’ll have to check out the Netflix.. I actually got 3 “fresh” full bulbs still in their skins. I attribute a lot of pre-packaged foods to China and intentional cancer as well, but generally not “fresh veggies”. I normally grow my stuff, but was in a pinch. Also read somewhere on a blog in ref to the vaccine that Bill Gates wants to get the worlds population down to 2 billion or something like tthat. Dont quote me on that. But, with the Wuhan Red Death, ObamaScare “Death Panels”, who knows..??
I just remembered the other episode about honey called “Lawyers, Guns, and Honey” As bad as it sounds for garlic, it’s worse for honey. There is more “honey” in the world than bees can make, honey from China gets routed through various other Asian countries, some that have absolutely no beehives for producing honey, and shipped to America and Europe. Lots if not all of that honey if either mixed with thinning agents or straight sugar water. Once again think local local local when buying your food and if it came from or through China I wouldn’t be putting it in my mouth.
Super good points. Thanks commentators!