Coronavirus Open Thread 2021

Looks like an interesting study, though I am surprised the percent of the gen pop with overweight or obesity is so low. I think a Public Health England report mentioned 63%. Could you add a link?

PHE site–need to download PDF:

“63% of adults in England are above a healthy weight, with 36% and 28% of adults living with overweight or obesity respectively. Two-thirds of men are living
with overweight or obesity (67%) and 6 out of 10 women are living with overweight or obesity (60%).
One out of 4 men is living with obesity (26%) and 29% of women are living with obesity11. Annexe A, Table 3, to this publication provides data on levels of adults living with severe obesity.
Overweight and obesity tend to increase with increasing age, with the lowest prevalence in 16-24-year olds. This peak occurs for men at the 55-64-year age
group (82%) and in the 65-74-year age group in women (70%), followed by a
decline in the oldest age group for men and women.”

What is overweight… above 25 BMI?

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@nuit posted BMI over 30. I think you’re talking about terminology (overweight, obese, morbidly obese etc) which isn’t really the point.

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They are also superspreaders, although the sample size was pretty small.

The problem of folks being overweight is not just in modern Britain, it’s a general human health issue around the world.
Anyway they should.give the numbers of covid patients for BMI 20-30, that would help us understand the relative risk.

So are we then not saying more than half of covid patients are not overweight or obese?

Given that more than fifty per cent of adults are overweight (that percentage goes up as people age) being thin is then a risk factor?

Old people better start eating more if they are at a ‘heathy weight’ ! (Interestingly being slightly overweight has been found to keep you living longer in many studies). It’s your muscle mass that is a key determinant of healthy aging.

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Indeed. I won’t repeat my previous rants, but it annoys me that the conclusion is:

  • OMG, metabolic syndrome is a massive epidemic. Guess we might as well just ignore it at this point because we can’t do anything about it

rather than

  • Well, we know what’s causing this, so maybe we can throw a few of the COVID-19 mitigation resources into preventing it from happening, so that we don’t have so many people flooding into the ICUs and dying.

The problem with Modern Britain specifically is that if you even mention it, you’re instantly accused of fat-shaming and ‘cancelled’, even though obesity per se isn’t the core issue. If it can’t be talked about, it can’t be fixed. I imagine the US is the same (possibly worse).

Have a look on pubmed etc. Depending on your criteria and on exactly what you’re measuring, the relative risk of serious complications or death is estimated at somewhere between 4x - 10x higher for those with metabolic syndrome (not obesity specifically - you can have m.s. without being obese). We’re not talking about a trivial difference here.

You are right. I just couldn’t recall offhand whether a BMI over 30 was overweight or obese (it is obese, and overweight is 25 to 29.9 BMI). So the statement in Nuit’s quote should have said that nearly half were OBESE (rather than overweight) or very obese. Only about a quarter are not overweight, obese, or
very obese which tracks with numbers from the general population (adjustingbfor age and sex).

Anyway, I think @nuit was quoting the lockdownsceptic website (https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/02/19/latest-news-290/), which seems to reference this document:
https://www.baccn.org/static/uploads/resources/ICNARC_COVID-19_report_2020-09-07.pdf.pdf

I can’t find the exact figures here. Figure 10 in the ICNARC September report matches pretty closely for very obese but not as much for obese.

Edit: I think they were citing the October report, which makes sense. The numbers match for that report.

https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/f9d3fd1a-8d0c-eb11-912b-00505601089b

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That’s good news.

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News is reporting the the FIRST does of the Pfizer vax is 92% effective. Talk of spacing out the second dose in order to hit more people with the first one.

I got my first last week. Some residual muscle ache in the crook of my arm.

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Good stuff. The mRNA vaccines need to get the nobel prize for medicine or economics whatever , now…
Wishing all a better 2021

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That opinion completely ignored the effects of social distancing restrictions or seasonal.effects lol . Cases are down, great they are down cannot be assumed to be only due to herd immunity. Also the variants are a huge concern in that regard .

‘Experts’ aren’t generally trying to 'fool we, the ‘little people’. Whoever the mysterious ‘experts’ are we don’t know from this opinion. It looks like a political hack article. It’s misleading.

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What isn’t these days? I’ll take a misleading headline with my 92% effective vax any day. :idunno:

It’s misleading content when I read it and it seems designed to seed mistrust against scientists and government officials and blame them.for…Whatever. Falsely claiming with little evidence that the drop is mostly due to herd immunity. There’s no solid evidence for that.
Opening up too quickly does have potential for new variant spread such as SA variant. It’s not hypothetical especially if quarantine was relaxed.

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Herd immunity won’t be achieved until 70% of the population has developed long term immunity. The numbers and reality are far away from that. Currently total recovered patients numbers around 20 million. That’s just 6% of the total US population.

While it’s true if the asymptomatic to symptomatic ratio is larger than 10:1, plus the vaccines we might be getting close towards having enough people with immunity, but there’s little evidence that most recovered people develops long term immunity.

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It’s 28 million, and those are confirmed cases. People who had symptoms and were tested positive.

The true number - including asymptomatic people who recovered without even knowing it - is probably at least 150 million. If your “10:1” figure is accurate (it’s probably less than that) then the entire population has already had it.

Even in the middle of last year there were certain population centres showing 30% with previous infection, IIRC.

Immunity is not an either-or thing, though. There are degrees of immunity. The comparative effect of smallpox on native and Western populations in the US is a good example.

Sadly some of those are no longer with us, thus no longer relevant in the herd immunity calculation, some of them are still undergoing treatments without a clear outcome, leaving us with just 19.1M total recovered cases. I rounded it up to 20 because it’s easier to calculate.

There are enough cases of reinfections, and many of them ending up with worse results than the first time, for there to be any hope of “herd immunity”

Nevertheless, as you pointed out yourself, a much larger number have had asymptomatic infection. The US is almost certainly approaching complete exposure to the virus, thanks to their initial “lalala I can’t hear you” approach to the pandemic. Perhaps not quite the same thing as herd immunity, but close enough.

Well yes. But it’s a matter of degree. As with (eg.) colds and flu, the fact that you’ve had colds and flu before makes you somewhat less susceptible to future infection. In particular, a higher viral load is required before you actually succumb.

If there’s no hope of “herd immunity” then everything we’ve done to date is completely futile.

A country can hardly claim they’ve done something about the virus unless its citizens have been wearing masks when they go outside.

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I was referring to countries which have implemented “mitigation” measures. If there’s no hope of ever reaching a balance point with the virus (via a combination of vaccines and prior infection) then those measures are/were pointless. The vaccines themselves are also pointless. Unless, of course, you’re suggesting that we all need to live in biohazard suits for the rest of our lives.

If we have the equipment and organization to all wear a biohazard suit that for 2 weeks, this thing would be over in 2 weeks. Although, we don’t really need to go that far. If everyone on this planet wear a mask everyday for a couple of months, this thing would have been over by May 2020.

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Almost certainly means what?