Fat people even more likely to be affected by COVID than previously thought

[pocketem]

UK government scientists are urgently investigating whether people living with obesity may be disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, after emerging data from intensive care units suggested a stronger link than previously thought.

New data from the UK’s Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre, which has been presented to ministers and SAGE scientists, has found that the proportion of severely obese patients in ICUs is twice the proportion in the general population.

Ministers have become increasingly alarmed by data coming out of Britain’s intensive care units, with some members of the government suggesting obesity may end up being a factor in the UK’s higher death toll.

The UK is currently projected to have the highest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe. Around 1 in 4 UK adults are obese. In 2018, the WHO found that the UK had the third highest obesity rate in Europe, behind only Malta and Turkey.

More here:
www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/alexwickham/uk-scientists-coronavirus-obesity-link

I've spent a lifetime trying to avoid medics (although my best mate is/was a GP). I'd much rather live a healthy-ish life and have a quick death without too much bother, and go quickly. But I am speaking from a long line of very healthy people. My great grand parents generation mostly made 80 without much medical intervention. And I am 63.

Both my parents and my DMIL are still with us. No social cleansing shite involved.

DMIL is away with the fairies, but DM is quite capable of managing Zoom at 85; still lives her life, walks her dog and in normal times, goes shopping alone and cooks for herself everyday. She's fit, intelligent a bit deaf but hearing aids help, although I wouldn't want to live next dor!

Chipotle, my DMIL is nearly 91. She has vascular dementia, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, arthritis, is doubly incontinent, and was widowed 12 years ago. "Thanks" to medical intervention, she is still with us, but I don't think she has enjoyed much of the last nine years.

What’s that got to do with Xenia’s plan to ban fat people from NHS treatment? She wasn’t putting age or frailty limits on it. Just ‘you’re fat and it’s too expensive for the taxpayer, off you pop’.

I’m sorry about your DMIL, that is no way for anyone to live.

Don’t people think though that obesity and it’s associated conditions are a massive strain on the NHS and that it shouldn’t be taboo to say this?

It’s not the same as saying “fat people don’t deserve treatment”.

I’m weary of the tiptoeing around the topic and the lack of honesty.

I follow an underwear maker on Instagram and she uses obese models at times and these always get lots of comments along the lines of “so brave” “so beautiful” “she looks amazing” “the best!” etc
I find this virtue signalling completely dishonest and do not believe the posters really think these things so in my mind why write them? No one aspires to be obese, it is not pleasant for the person suffering with it surely?

I'm not endorsing the idea of banning the overweight from accessing NHS care, but I think that if one is clinically overweight, then rolling out all the stops on ground-breaking treatments is probably OTT, unless it's as part of a risky experimental process, for which survival rates are untested.

I have a friend, type 1 diabetes since she was 8 years old, who had a pancreas transplant five years ago when she was 62, on the back of open heart surgery. It was one of the first done in the uk and rare in the US where it was first tried. There was a great deal of surgery, and several follow up surgeries to change things but the medics have had the opportunity to refine the techniques on her. She will always be immuno-compromised, but she's no longer diabetic. However, it was SO risky that it would not have been tested on anyone younger or in decent health. It was the last chance saloon, and she took it. She knew from the start that the risk was enormous, but that it could change medical thinking. It was a brave decision, but she would have been dead by now if she had not gambled.

@XingMing

It was like that with my grandad. They fitted a pacemaker to the poor chap when he was in his 90's, chair-bound, deaf and suffering from dementia. To my mind that's just cruel.

And, based on purely anecdotal information, only my GP is thinner than I am, but he's a rock climber and male. I have not seen another practitioner in my surgery in 10 years that I would describe as slender.

HeIenaDove Wed 06-May-20 00:02:56
Re, obesity
(I posted this on another thread but the points should be made here too)
I believe the reason some health workers are overweight is due to not having proper breaks to eat proper food (even worse at the moment i bet) and often only have time to grab snack food on the run. Which in a lot of cases will be junk food and intermittent eating will bugger up the metabolism Picture this in a care home "No sorry Mrs Smith You will have to sit in your own piss cos its my lunch break now and i need the time to cook and eat proper food. Imagine the outcry from media outlets and the AIBU on MN.

So what should overweight health workers and overweight care workers do? Should they down tools and isolate/shield.

Or walk off the ward and go and find something healthy to eat no matter how busy it is?

Its also worth mentioning that care home workers are some of the lowest paid in the country.

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Add message | Report | Message posterHeIenaDove Wed 06-May-20 00:05:02
The fact is we are not treating early enough and all the smoke and mirrors tactics like searching for other groups to blame is to cover up bad decisions.

Add message | Report | Message posterHeIenaDove Wed 06-May-20 00:12:19
Some of the overweight/obese people being othered are working in the NHS , supermarkets etc and are not only working all hours but sacrificing their own health to do so.

Isnt it funny that whenever the subject of NHS and obesity comes up the problems that the working patterns make for their own staff in this respect are glossed over.

@ChipotleBlessing

Well yes proves my point that our society has developed in such a way to set people up to fail to keep their weight healthy. Why are our shops crammed with cheap heavily advertised addictively unhealthy food? It’s crazy that you have to go to some effort to eat well. The level of exercise required to work off these foods is immense and unacheviable by most people.

It’s no great effort to eat well and/or not too much

People make choices

They need to own these choices

I dont have to go to any great effort to eat well either.

People don't have to buy the cheap heavily advertised addictively unhealthy food. it's a choice.

Actually if you are trying to but food on the go ( perhaps on a journey or short break at work ) it’s very VERY hard to get food that isn’t heavily carb based.

I know this because I am gluten free because of a medical condition. Most of the time I have to take food with me as everything is sandwiches, cakes, biscuits, Pastry, pizza. In many shops and cafes that’s ALL THEY SELL. Even “ salads “ in Boots are based on wheat - pasta and cous cous.

Commercial Soup is often bulked out with carbs like flour, pasta and noodles.

I’ve often been to restaurants and they can serve NOTHING that isn’t based on bread / pastry. Not a single thing.

After years of research I know now which chain stores sell food I can eat but often there’s little choice.

So please don’t say it’s No great effort to eat healthy food on the go eg in a hospital canteen at lunchtime . This has been my life for 15 years and NO ITS NOT EASY.

No I don’t either but if you are brought up on those foods develop a taste for them they available and cheap and you then work on a job where you eat on the run I can see how the bad habits encouraged by what’s easily available.

I put some effort in to having BMI 21 of 46 as you age you can’t get away with eating badly

When I did corporate law working all hours the available middle of the night food was coke crisps and takeaway pizza 🙄

Oh and chocolate bars of course.

0DETTE

That's a fair point. I don't eat on the go largely because I know that the only food on offer is cheap, carb laden crap! And I'm fortunate enough to have time to make lunch before I go to work and a fridge when I get there. But I appreciate that's not the same for everyone.

I was thinking more about people wheeling their trolleys up and down the aisles doing the weekly shop and just filling up on stuff that, tbh, doesn't even taste nice.

Hell will freeze over before overweight people like BJ decide to charge overweight people for NHS care. So don't worry there is no chance.

What we will see next year is a nation in poverty, on its knees and as well as being physically the "sick man of Europe" as we currently are (presumably because we have not looked after ourselves as well as most other Europeans) we will economically be pretty sick too so as usual we will increase people's taxes including nurses and teachers and all the rest of those who pay income tax, probably increase indirect taxes too and cut everything back to ensure we still have an NHS and we will continue not to discriminate even though obesity and sugar cause that metabolic syndrome someone mentioned being in the paper above and even though if people put in the effort to change what they eat or to eat less we could "save the NHS".

I have never wanted to abolish the NHS but it is certainly a very different beast from when my doctor father joined it on qualifying in the 1950s and it is burdened by sugar and obesity more than any single other challenge. it is not as if that is a tiny part of the NHS issues. It is a huge part.

I have never hated anyone and I am trying to lose weight at the moment. I know it is hard to eat less for most people.

even though if people put in the effort to change what they eat or to eat less we could "save the NHS".

I agree. And it would be far more useful than clapping in the streets.

I think its worth remembering that overweight people have very high rates of. medical neglect, refusing tests only later to be diagnosed with something serious, its a serious problem in America, and becoming worse over here. often one bad experience puts people off going back to medical care. And just to point judgemental behaviour within the health care system solves nothing, if STI clinics operated that way no one would go. you can't go down the road of some people deserve basic human decency and others dont based on their clothes size.

Yes, we could have eat 1,200 calories a day and save the NHS or something like that for those who are over weight etc. I agree it is complex however. There are not many overweight old people so a lot die younger anyway.

The NHS was set up on the basis of a welfare state after WWII where if you worked hard and paid your stamp you could take out. My doctor uncle even got a council house - as we were all in it together. Now we seem to have a styset where some put a lot more in than others and those who put the most in get less out (no single person tax allowance, no child benefit, none of the tax reliefs my parents got in the 70s, no free university education, just high direct and indirect tax and not much back unless you are less well off).

The rest of Europe tends to have more of the contributory system the UK used to have - if you pay in then you draw out. If you have not paid your stamp/NI/insurance you are much worse off.

@Xenia also mental health help was non existent other than psych wards therefore should we go back to this way of thinking. That only those with straight forward issues get help?
If your child/grandchild was overweight and needed medical help would you sit them down and go I'm so sorry but because you're overweight you don't deserve treatment?

Maybe we should have a slogan after coronvirus, eat less, exercise more, save lives, save the NHS