Just look at this article. COVID-19 Warning for overweight people. They sure do know how to scare us. So let’s look at their math.
Overweight and obese people made up 64% of the people with COVID-19 in the ICU in the UK. This sounds like a grim and scary statistic. Indeed the article gets even more damning as it lists a whole host of possible reasons why this illness could be worse for the overweight and obese.
Indeed, this science spread across the pond as known jump-on-the-bandwagon Dr. Oz scared his audience with it. He tried to help, pointing out simple exercises his viewers could do while watching television. Like squats and jumping jacks. He looked so earnest. Like he had really looked at this situation.
Do you know what the statistic for being overweight or obese is in the UK? 62 %! Why that could easily be in the error bars of this COVID-19 study!
It gets worse. 2014 is the last year that I could find stats for being overweight and obese in the UK. This article I linked to gives them as well as the increase in percentage since 1980. It’s possible they have increased further. That’s the track they were on. So the 2020 overweight and obese percentage might be exactly 64%.
This study shouldn’t have been circulated nearly as widely as it has been. Definitely not with the fear mongering messages that it has been associated with.
At this point I would like to ask: What if being overweight or obese has a protective effect on serious cases of COVID-19? To me, that is just as likely a scenario. Do your homework when reporting on such studies. Otherwise you are just a click-baiter or a viewer-baiter.
Just for the record, the pandemic met the obesity epidemic and nothing happened.
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