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To prevent COVID19, how many masks should you wear?
One?
Two?
Until your ears can’t support any more?
Or has a real issue with real impact on people dying from COVID been staring us in the face since the beginning, as it does so many other health maladies to the point it makes the mask debate appear to be child’s play?
There is. And it’s name is obesity.
But before we go further, let’s establish a couple things.
First, no, this article is not anti-mask.
Wear a mask where appropriate. If others around you are scared, you can do a nice thing by wearing a mask around them and taking it off later.
And second, no, this article is also not fat-shaming.
Fat-shaming is reprehensible. One’s weight is not a mark of their character in the least bit.
And if you are obese, that also does not mean you are not beautiful.
Shoot, I’m sure you are!
What this article is is one thing, as are all other health articles on this site:
This article is pro-life.
And obesity is not.
So we’re going to prove it.
Let’s go.
In 2017, the Cleveland Clinic found obesity to be the top cause of preventable life-years lost.
To the tune of 47 percent more life-years lost than those caused by tobacco.
You know, smoking.
That thing that we all know is unhealthy and deadly.
Ask yourself if you still hear anybody extolling the virtues of smoking, or if instead you see massive advertising campaigns to persuade people to quit smoking.
It’s because the evidence is clear and the public and private health messaging around the prevention of smoking has likely saved more lives than we know.
And obesity costs 47 percent more lost years of life than tobacco does.
So where are the ad campaigns?
Here’s some more research.
In 2019, researchers from the University of Oxford found obesity to be implicated in two-thirds of the leading causes of death from non-communicable diseases worldwide.
Two-thirds.
Want more research?
A 2013 study from Columbia University found obesity accounted for 18 percent of deaths among Black and White Americans between the ages of 40 and 85.
That’s about one in every five deaths in that group attributed to obesity. Just behind tobacco use.
If it hasn’t surpassed tobacco use yet.
So why have I mentioned COVID? Or masks?
Simple.
If you’ve turned on your TV anytime in the past year or, gasp, spent any time on Twitter or Facebook, you know you’ve been inundated with incessant arguments over mask-wearing.
Brutal, nasty arguments.
Family-tearing-apart arguments. Relationship-destroying arguments. Sometimes even violent arguments!
Almost as if mask-wearing was the single most important method of COVID prevention.
But little, if any, discussion of obesity.
Even as it kills Americans left and right, leading to more lost years of life than the widely demonized habit of smoking tobacco.
Knowing that, why would the first (or second) question asked by media, pundits, experts, etc. not be “what impact does obesity have on someone’s ability to survive a COVID infection”?
And why wouldn’t they spend every waking moment on air discussing it, knowing it will save lives? If not from COVID, then from virtually every other disease?
Surely your favorite media pundits are really looking out for your best interests at all times, right?
I mean, that is what they sell you on, isn’t it?
They’re looking out for YOU!
You’ve probably heard the old media adage “if it bleeds, it leads.”
Well, saving lives from obesity certainly doesn’t bleed.
And political lines cannot be drawn around it, as they’ve somehow managed to do around mask-wearing.
So it doesn’t lead.
But that does not mean it is not perhaps the most important topic to be discussing if you want to save lives.
And new research is bearing that out.
The World Obesity Federation, a non-profit associated with the WHO, analyzed data from Johns Hopkins University and found some startling correlations between obesity and COVID deaths. Namely:
2.2 million out of 2.5 million global deaths were in countries with high levels of obesity.
(Even if there were a population correlation at play, the next stat will blow that argument out of the water.)
Death rates were 10 TIMES HIGHER in countries where more than 50 percent of the population is overweight.
10. Times.
The researchers also note there are no examples of high death rates in countries with less than 40 percent of the population overweight.
Check out the following chart.
It’s startling.
The dots on this chart represent where countries stand in terms of the percentage of their population with a BMI of greater than 25 kg/m2 (horizontal line) and COVID mortality rates (vertical line).
You don’t need a PhD to see this.
Take a look at the 50 percent marker on the horizontal line.
Every case of high death rates occurs above that marker.
Every one.
Below 50 percent overweight?
You don’t see a single example of a country with even 30 deaths per 100,000 people.
But above 50 percent overweight?
You can see how high they go for yourself.
(Note: the researchers did consider factors such as record-keeping, wealth, and age, and do not believe it is likely higher death rates are attributed to any of those factors.)
As with all things COVID-related, we will wait for more stats to come out.
The true story will be told in the future.
But there is one thing we knew for sure before we ever heard of COVID, and it is as true now as it ever was.
Obesity sucks.
Don’t let it be the end of your story.
References:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170422101614.htm
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191024143218.htm
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301379
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/03/04/obesity-and-covid-death-rate-closely-linked-in-new-study/
Click to access COVID-19-and-Obesity-The-2021-Atlas.pdf
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