I wrote a piece March 10 in which I argued that “obesity is a much more dangerous public health problem than the coronavirus.”
Four days later, I apologized for that piece because it wrongly “downplayed the risk of the coronavirus and criticized the resultant ‘public panic (or at least [the] media panic)” over COVID-19.
”I was not entirely wrong,” I wrote. “For the vast majority of us, obesity is a much more dangerous public health problem than the coronavirus.”
Well, as it turns out, instead of looking at obesity and the coronavirus as two separate and distinct problems or causes of death, we should consider them as complementary partners in crime—as joint and interrelated causes of mortality: because, as the Washington Examiner’s Tina Lowe points out:
“New data seems to indicate that obesity is itself a risk factor” for dying from the coronavirus. “In France,” she notes,
more than 4 in 5 coronavirus patients in intensive care are overweight; and in Shenzhen, China, researchers found that obesity “significantly increases the risk of developing severe pneumonia” for coronavirus patients…
We also know that preexisting conditions—including hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease—contribute. Being overweight or obese are risk factors for all of those conditions…
This helps to explain why, relatively speaking, many more young Americans are dying from the coronavirus than are young people in other countries. As Lowe reports:
Stanford University researchers found that whereas those under 65 comprised 5% to 9% of all coronavirus deaths in eight major European epicenters, those younger than 65 have accounted for a staggering 30% of all coronavirus deaths in major U.S. hotbeds.
For those in New York City, the absolute risk for people under 65 of dying from the coronavirus has been nearly three times greater than those in Italy, seven times greater than those in Belgium, and 46 times greater than those in Germany…
It should come as no surprise, [then], that younger populations in the United States are being hit so hard. More than 1 in 3 Americans is obese compared to roughly 1 in 5 Italians, Belgians, and Germans.
It’s no big mystery. We’re just fat, and right now it’s a big problem.
Indeed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly 2.8 million Americans die annually; and, as Medscape reports:
Overweight and obesity were associated with nearly 1 in 5 deaths (18.2%) among adults in the United States from 1986 through 2006, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health. Previous research has likely underestimated obesity’s impact on US mortality.
Mathematically, this means that roughly 500,000 Americans die every year because of obesity (2.8 million x 18 percent = 504,000).
By contrast, the worst projections for the coronavirus initially said it would lead to as many as 200,000 American deaths, or less than half the number of deaths caused by obesity.
National Public Radio, moreover, reports that, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “the final toll currently ‘looks more like 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000’ that U.S. officials previously estimated.”
But again, my point here is not to minimize the coronavirus, which is far more insidious, sudden, and unpredictable than obesity. Instead, it is to point out that the prevalence of obesity in the United States makes the coronavirus a much more dangerous and potentially fatal problem, especially for young people.
The bottom line: while you’re at home sheltering in place under stay-at-home orders mandated by the government, be sure to limit your trips to the fridge and kitchen pantry, and be sure to get in a good home workout.
That way, if you do contract the coronavirus, you’ll have a much better chance of weathering the storm and coming out alive on the other side.
Feature photo credit: Daily Times.