"Too old and too fat" interview with a Theresa Coffey

[itsgettingweird]

Now that's not actually what she said!

She suggested some of the reasons why our death rate may be comparably higher is because we have an aging population and have an obesity problem.

Piers Morgan chose the words too old and too fat because he's the test he is and likes to play mind games.

Dr Hilary actually backed her up and said our average is higher and our obesity is higher than most other European countries.

He also said this could be a contributing factor alongside other factors we know about which of course is boarders, failed T and T and late lockdowns.

PM suggested she was blaming the public. I didn't see it that way. She was pointing out it could be a contributing factor - she certainly wasn't blaming the 90yo for being 90 and catching covid and dying!

Boris himself said his weight was probably a contributing factor to why he suffered badly. He accepted that there was some responsibility on his part to rectify this.

Did anyone else feel it was totally blaming the public or just a way of adding reasonable contributing factors whilst failing to continuously acknowledge the governments own contributing failures?!

@JiminyLeeCricket care homes are largely privately owned. But if the government was indeed forcing people back into privately owned homes from hospitals without testing or testing positive then yes that is bad. I have never got to the bottom of exactly what happened there as these homes are not government owned.

Oh come on, it's widely know that government policy was for the NHS to discharge covid+ and untested elderly patients from hospital back into care homes.

Thousands and thousands of preventable deaths. Vast numbers of preventable transmissions into the care sector workforce and beyond.

It's all minuted in Select Committee reports.

Jiminy agree care homes was a problem. It I also know it was a problem Europe wide. The issue was the government thought by releasing no ceiling funding to discharge elderly from hospitals they were creating bed space. What we didn't know then that we know now is people can be spreading virus and carrying it 2 days before they are symptomatic. They didn't test as science didn't know to test.
A huge tragic fatal mistake but not a deliberate attempt to throw the elderly under the bus.

But they could t do anything about the fact we have an older population and therefore we may get higher deaths when people catch it.

And why is no one challenging PM about going abroad.

He's shouting about how boarders should be closed. He believes they should be closed. He believes having them open is part of the problem and people can bring in variants. He's constantly questioning why so many people at airports.

Yet he's willing to be part of that problem by travelling abroad for Christmas. Whilst lecturing everyone else about staying at home and doing their bit and it's tough but we need to do it.

Well if we need to so does he.

Cant say I'm a Boris fan but at least he said his weight was an issue with covid and has publicly admitted it and tried to do something about it.

And I agree about half price KFC etc. No one had to eat it 3 times a week because they could. Ds had 1 half price Mac Donald's in that time via a drive through after we'd spent day on beach.

They didn't test as science didn't know to test.

IIRC, Germany developed an effective diagnostic test in January.

The problem wasn't the science but the lack of capacity to test or track and trace.

Asymptomatic transmission was also suspected from fairly early on. Certainly by March.

63% of UK adults are overweight, 24.9% are obese.
But of course pointing this out is fat shaming.

I agree the government have not been clear on guidelines.
What's needed is good dose of common sense.
Wash your hands frequently.
Stay in when possible.
Don't mix unless you have to.
Go shopping once a week for essentials.
And if you know you're overweight take at least small steps to change this.

In France there is a curfew from 6pm to 6am.
Its enforced too.

@Oreservoir
I can’t remember when I was out beyond 6 pm. Too darn cold.
I live in a poor town. I don’t think people are any fatter here than elsewhere in the uk.
I don’t think you have to be fat to be unhealthy you can be average weight and be a heavy smoker. That’s not going to help if covid strikes.
I’m not sure what the latest statistics are but about a month ago we’d had 151 covid deaths since March out of a population of 94,000

A look at the local obituaries will show that most deaths in there were for people well over the age of 60 , with many in their 80s and 90s and in care homes
It’s ok to tell us there’s 100k deaths in 10 months but unless the numbers are broken down into categories and the people were tested for covid then it’s not very helpful.

I had an awful cough last April. You’d have thought it was covid if you’d heard it but it wasn’t it was a fungal cough caused by an aspergillus.
Thankfully I didn’t die ( I wasn’t unwell enough) but had I, then it might have Been recorded as such and inflated the numbers and we know that many people were recorded as covid deaths that hadn’t been tested.

I've always supported idea of curfew.

This is because I suspect (I'll be honest I have no evidence!) most household mixing is people drinking in the evenings. With a curfew people can't travel to others houses and also if they do break the rules during the day they are unlikely to be drinking and therefore less likely to get too close accidentally.

I maybe naive but I'm always shocked when I hear stories of parties and yesterday the baby shower. I work in a school. I know how anxious I am in a classroom (even mow with lower numbers) and cannot imagine being comfortable in a house full of people.

I work in a school OP, and I too share your concerns.
We have far more key worker students in than April, and SLT expect the numbers to rise due to the long term closing of schools. We now have staff in 3 days a week, when previously we were doing 1 day a week on the rota.
Of course obesity is a problem - Jenny Harries pointed this out last Spring, as did JVT. My DD is an ICU nurse and her team has said from the start that obesity is a huge factor in outcomes. They have had to call in extra staff to prone patients, too heavy for 4 people to turn, on many occasions.

PM is a muppet, there is no doubt about this, but regardless of his phrasing and goading, obesity does need to be addressed.

Eat out to help out - with all the fast food outlets participating, was ludicrous. Rather than that, the money would have been better spent on subsiding fresh fruit and vegetables.

@itsgettingweird

I'm 5"7 and 14 st 3. I'm over weight and size 14-16 (more comfortable at 16 end)

I've put on a nearly a stone since lockdown 1.

My BMI is now in obese range (31).

I know I need to eat better and exercise more. I know I'm about 2 stone and more like 3 overweight.

We have an odd idea of overweight in this country and no one ever thinks I'm over weight. They think I have some kind of issue because I say I am and that I need to get myself sorted.

Unfortunately, according to the NHS BMI calculator, you are actually between 4 and 5 stone overweight, OP. Don't wait any longer. Look at ways of getting yourself back on track as soon as you can. Set goals and start taking those first steps to a slimmer, healthier you.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(20)30062-3/fulltext

"It is possible that we could prevent up to 75% of new cases of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes, as well as 40% of cancer incidence if we eliminated smoking, unhealthy diets, harmful consumption of alcohol, and insufficient physical activity"

It's all there. There are so many committees and reports out there. Long reads, but the National Longevity Study is also a good one. There is no doubt we are an unhealthy country. The NHS may well help us live longer, but those are not "healthy" extra years. Along comes Covid, and swallows all those with underlying conditions. If these basically unhealthy people didn't exist, and they do thanks to the NHS, we wouldn't have such a high death rate, it's a Catch-22.

If these basically unhealthy people didn't exist, and they do thanks to the NHS, we wouldn't have such a high death rate, it's a Catch-22.

I'll correct it for you.

If these basically unhealthy people had not been exposed to covid-19, we wouldn't have such a high death rate.

Knowing they are more vulnerable, measures should have been taken to avoid exposure. Either targeted measures, or generic measures to reduce the number of cases in the community.

Men between 60 and 70/80 also have a much higher death rate than women of the same age in many countries.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00508-020-01793-9

How about blaming men for the higher rates too? Too many men in the UK?

Noting the groups that are most vulnerable to covid-19 should be a tool to help protect them, not a cop out for the government, or for our own actions in failing to prevent the spread of the disease.

Is obesity (and other behaviour related conditions) a problem in terms of population health in general? Yes.
Should obesity be tackled as a population health issue? Yes.
Should we point the finger and don't be concerned about the high death rate because it's mostly obese people (and basically they deserved to die for being unhealthy - as it is kind of implied)? No!

@itsgettingweird

I've always supported idea of curfew.

This is because I suspect (I'll be honest I have no evidence!) most household mixing is people drinking in the evenings. With a curfew people can't travel to others houses and also if they do break the rules during the day they are unlikely to be drinking and therefore less likely to get too close accidentally.

I maybe naive but I'm always shocked when I hear stories of parties and yesterday the baby shower. I work in a school. I know how anxious I am in a classroom (even mow with lower numbers) and cannot imagine being comfortable in a house full of people.

Agreed.

Lweji agree with your post above.

However that doesn't change PM reaction. It is true that our age and weight have had an effect on death rates. And also it's been identified that having a large BAME population. Because they all related to death risks.

It doesn't change that people getting infected due to government not making decisions quicker will have increased risk of death for those older and with obesity.

But TC did not say the public were to blame for being to old and too fat.

Simply - and we all agree - it is a contributing factor to our high death rate.

I've been trying to find but the figures aren't out there (unless someone else can find them) Spain and Frances current infection numbers and also their current number of deaths.

@Dowser no of course you don't have to be overweight to be unhealthy.
However I have a friend who has always been overweight and from time to time has tried really hard to lose the weight tbf.
But she consistently comes out with the same two contradictory sentences.

1. just because I'm overweight doesn't mean I'm not healthy
2. its not my fault I'm overweight I have health problems. Being overweight when you're young is manageable, as you get older its a ticking time bomb.

I've been trying to find but the figures aren't out there (unless someone else can find them) Spain and Frances current infection numbers and also their current number of deaths.

Just Google Covid France or Covid Spain, you'll get the graph and numbers.

22000.new cases in France yesterday and over 600 deaths.

Obesity is a big factor. The Times ran an article yesterday about some young(er) people who had died of/with covid. One was 21 and died of a heart attack - she was slim.

The elephant in the room was that the others were all overweight to obese.

People don't want to admit it because it sounds like victim blaming.

Then she ran away by cutting the interview short when she realised what she had just said which is simply cowardly for a minister

Car crash interview

I think it was because she had been waiting for them to get to her and were 15 minutes late and she had other media slots waiting so the 20 minutes that she had been booked for started at 8.15am but her yet view didn’t start till 8.30am so by 8.35am she was on to another channel

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

covid19-country-overviews.ecdc.europa.eu/ (now without the UK, though)

@redsquirrelfan

Obesity is a big factor. The Times ran an article yesterday about some young(er) people who had died of/with covid. One was 21 and died of a heart attack - she was slim.

The elephant in the room was that the others were all overweight to obese.

People don't want to admit it because it sounds like victim blaming.

Obesity is a big factor. I think we all know that.

The issue is that covid-19 is a transmissible, and thus, preventable disease.
People should not be getting sick, not in high numbers. Not after over a year of the start of the pandemic. Governments have failed their populations if people are dying in high numbers now.

The causes for the death rates are more complex than the population is too old and too fat, which was her answer.

This is the primary reason the death rate in the UK is so high.
Basically, the total number of cases is being hugely underestimated.
But no government official will want to mention that.

www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-covid-19-test-positivity-rate