7 ms·

This is an interesting paper because it shows how fat cell tissue worsens outcomes for Covid. We’ve known for awhile that obesity increases the risk of mortalit

This is an interesting paper because it shows how fat cell tissue worsens outcomes for Covid. We’ve known for awhile that obesity increases the risk of mortality, however, this gives a clue (the inflammatory response and fat cells amplify the virus) as to why that’s the case.

elric 5y ago
This strikes me as odd. Females tend to have more body fat than males, on average, yet females seem to fare better after Covid-19 infections. So either the adipose inflammation improves disease outcome (unlikely?), or the effect of this inflammation is neglible and other factors are more important? I only gave the paper a cursory glance, but it doesn't seem to address this issue.
- legutierr 5y ago
  Women tend to suffer more from long covid, however, per my understanding.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    long covid has very similar demographics to chronic fatigue syndrome. issues like these are very politicized, but it's likely that most of long covid is a combination of people who are having post-illness long-term sequelae and then also people with CFS-like symptoms, perhaps exacerbated by negative media coverage around covid and long covid.
    - rp1 5y ago
      Watching how poorly some professional athletes perform during long Covid recovery makes me highly doubt CFS as the root cause. Also, people have reported long-term loss of smell which also isn’t a typical post-illness or CFS thing.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        it's almost like you didn't read my comment. as i've said, long-term sequelae certainly exist - and they are different for covid probably. i also have had long-term loss of smell and modification of taste after getting a breakthrough delta case. that said, demographically (as well as by diversity of symptoms reported), it does appear that there is also a "CFS-like" disease population being super-imposed on top of those that are experiencing long-term sequelae. much of the conversation around long covid is also being funded by ME/CFS lobbying/patient advocacy groups [0]. i think there are two distinct phenomena, and the fact that women are over-represented as long covid patients may be due to the CFS-like phenomena rather than the sequelae one. [0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-cov...
        melling 5y ago
        That’s an Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. They tend to not be trustworthy The Journal has told us twice this year that “Herd Immunity is Near” “Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial” https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despite-faucis-denial-11616624554 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despi...
        whimsicalism 5y ago
        i'm not citing the opinion piece as a general endorsement of the wall street journal, or even this article. merely citing it because it condenses the evidence showing that CFS patient advocacy groups are heavily funding many of the prominent long covid organizations.
        xorcist 5y ago
        Is this part of some weird political debate or something? The only thing I got out of that article is that one needs to count both the vaccinated and the recovered towards immunity levels, which is very much not controversial.
        5y ago
    - legutierr 5y ago
      Can you explain how negative media coverage is relevant here? How can a real illness that people are suffering from be affected at all by negative media coverage? Are you saying that it's something that people are imagining because they are being influenced by media reports? And what do you mean by "politicized"? Where has long covid been politicized? I haven't seen anything like that.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        > real illness that people are suffering from be affected at all by negative media coverage Real illnesses that people are suffering from can be psychosomatic or affected by mental status. There is a ton of stigma around suggestions like these, hence the subtext of your comment that a "real illness" is independent from mental state. > And what do you mean by "politicized"? Where has long covid been politicized? I haven't seen anything like that. If you are a researcher and your research suggests that many cases of long covid or CFS have a psychological component or are psychosomatically driven, you will get death threats as well as condemned by advocacy organizations. [0] That is what I mean by politicized. The underlying root of the issue is stigma around any sort of illness that has a psychological component. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-death-threats-for-scientists https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/chronic-f...
        nicoburns 5y ago
        Is there any evidence that it is psychosomatic? My understanding is that CFS (and long covid which indeed appears to be similar) affects a wide range of people, most often after some kind of viral infection that is very much physical in nature. And furthermore that the most successful treatment programs tend to focus on careful regulating exercise and diet which again seems to be largely physical. Just because the underlying biological mechanism isn't understood doesn't mean that there isn't one. To me CFS seems like a case of a disease neglected by medical science because it's dismissed as being psychosomatic.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
    - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
      Totally. Media coverage is why I suddenly started falling asleep during my work day and why my sense of smell and taste are still screwed up a year later. I can't taste oranges, cannot stand the smell or taste of tap water, and my office smells like an ash tray because CNN and MSNBC, and not because there's actually an issue. One of the very best ways to be insulting on this sort of an issue is to tell people that what they're experiencing is a fabrication of a media conspiracy that doesn't exist.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        1. Maybe actually read my comment, where I acknowledge that post-covid sequelae are absolutely a thing. I myself experienced long-term sense of smell screwups. 2. Psychological components of an illness are still an illness, and I'm not suggesting that long covid is a "fabrication." You need to get over your internalized stigma, psychological effects can be incredibly powerful. People experiencing CFS get similarly outraged when people suggest there is a psychological component to the disease. This is due to stigma. Indeed, if anything, CFS is good evidence of the strong impact that even a (probably) psychologically derived illness can have on one's physical well-being. 3. Even saying that something is at least partially driven by the media does not mean it is not a "serious" problem. Media coverage of high profile suicides leads to a measurable increase in the number of suicides in the general population. Those people killing themselves is not a "fabrication" and is in fact a really serious problem. i would be surprised if we hadn't seen something like cfs for covid emerge given the level of scary (to be clear, not irrationally scary, justifiably scary) media coverage around covid.
        zajio1am 5y ago
        > This is due to stigma. Indeed, if anything, CFS is good evidence of the strong impact that even a (probably) psychologically derived illness can have on one's physical well-being. AFAIK there is no strong consensus that (even covid-unrelated) CFS is probably psychosomatic in constrast to, say, immunologic.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
    - yosito 5y ago
      I know people with long covid and people with CFS, and while there may be some overlapping symptoms that are common, they are decidedly different in most people.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        As I've said, "long covid" is an overloaded term right now. I'm also not going to be drawing conclusions from "I know some people X" and "other people Y." Hopefully the scientists studying this don't do that either.
    - vimy 5y ago
      CFS isn’t psychosomatic though. Enough research out there that disproves the ‘it’s all in your head’ theory. Long Covid _is_ CFS. Viruses and bacteria are always the trigger for CFS.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        > Enough research out there that disproves the ‘it’s all in your head’ theory. That is definitely not even close to the consensus opinion of the field. there have been a number of attempts to try to show viruses as causing cfs, they have been discredited, whereas the pace study has not. [0] post-aids patient advocacy, in clinical practice it has become incredibly unwise and unpopular to say that something is psychological in nature. even researchers who don't do anything in the clinic will still get death threats for suggesting otherwise. [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/471282a https://www.nature.com/articles/471282a
        vimy 5y ago
        Pace has been debunked. The idea that is has become unpopular to say something is psychological in nature couldn’t be more wrong. Talk to CFS patients before you make statements like that. There is not a single CFS patient who hasn’t been accused of making it all up. Not. A. Single. One. Whenever a doctor doesn’t know the answer, it’s always psychological. It’s the easy way out. People like you piss me off to no end so I’m gonna stop replying.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
        you clearly have massive internal stigma against people with psychologically-based illness. this is not the same as "making it all up." this is exactly what i mean when i say this stuff is politicized. i disagree fundamentally with the epistemic theory of "trust people to know what is causing their illness, not doctors or researchers." e: for evidence of what this particular strain of "patient advocacy" looks like, just peruse through this person's previous comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398210), such as: > Alzheimer isn’t a disease but a symptom of chronic viruses and bacteria. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066504/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066504/ > People with Alzheimer have been cured after taking antibiotics.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - elzbardico 5y ago
      Any viral infection can cause some medium term effects. But most of the people with so called long-covid didn’t even test positive. They are just really convinced that they got it some time ago and that now they have long covid and the doctors are gaslighting them
- GLGirty 5y ago
  Maybe at levels of obesity where it affects mortality, the gender difference in fat composition is negligible?
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    > The age-adjusted prevalence of severe obesity among U.S. adults was 9.2% in 2017–2018. Women had a higher prevalence of severe obesity (11.5%) than men (6.9%). The prevalence was highest among adults aged 40–59 (11.5%), followed by adults aged 20–39 (9.1%) and adults aged 60 and over (5.8%). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm
- mrob 5y ago
  Obesity isn't the only risk factor. Here's a report on another mechanism of action that could increase risk for males: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/androgen-receptors-covid-19 https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/androgen-receptors...
- deanjones 5y ago
  Leaving aside all of the possible confounders for the difference in severity of Covid-19 infection in men and women, it's not the case that women on average have more body fat than men. So for a "healthy" man and a "healthy" woman, the woman would tend to have more fatty tissue, but more men are overweight. UK figures show that 40% of men are overweight, compared to 31% of women. In the US, 74% of men are overweight, compared to 67% of women.
  - phonypc 5y ago
    The categories of overweight and obese are based on BMI, which is not relative proportion of body fat. On average, of a man and woman who both have a BMI of 30, the woman will have a higher proportion of body fat.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      I think both these claims can be true at the same time, can’t they? To make a toy example just to make the reasoning clear: if men’s BMI was distributed as 50% = 20, 50% = 35, and women’s BMI was distributed as 95% = 20, 5% = 35, the average body fat of all men would be higher than the average body fat of all women, even though the average body fat of women BMI=X would be higher than of men BMI=X for all X.
  - davidjgraph 5y ago
    Those US figures are overweight or obese. The UK figures are likely overweight only. Over 60% of UK adults are overweight or obese [0] [0] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/risk/overweight-and-obesity#heading-One https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
  - chiefalchemist 5y ago
    Do you have a link for those % stats? I'm not questioning the accuracy. Only that I want to share it with others (in a told ya so sorta way).
    - deanjones 5y ago
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
I'm going to issue 2 ignorant assumptions of mine and a "could it be" hypothesis, but assuming 1) That not a lot of Africans are obese and 2) Covid has so far not hit Africa that bad; Could it be that their lack of fat tissue is the reason? Yeah, this is the Internet and I could do research to confirm or deny 1) and 2), but hey I'm just here because I'm distracting myself from work right now.
- belltaco 5y ago
  There are several factors, higher Vitamin D levels because of time spent outdoors, median age of the population, co-morbidities including diabetes, levels and availability of testing and gathering data etc. etc.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  likely much more to do with 1. poor testing 2. much younger skewing population compared to any other continent.
  - hanselot 5y ago
    I love how people are able to rationalise things while turning a blind eye to something way more obvious. Africans are the least poisoned demographic obviously.
- petesergeant 5y ago
  > That not a lot of Africans are obese I don't think that's accurate. Eye-balling this[0], northern African and South African women are more obese than most European and US countries, and although men seem less obese, when you look at it overall, over 50-60% of adult South Africans and northern Africans are overweight or obese, compated to 75% of Americans. Obviously cherry-picking a bit here and ignoring western and most of sub-Saharan Africa, but I don't think "not a lot of Africans are obese" stands up as an assumption. [0] https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/?age=a&sex=f https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/?age=a&sex=f
rbartelme 5y ago
Preprints in biology do not carry the same weight as preprints in CS or physics.
carlmr 5y ago
It's a clue but not necessarily true. Being fat is also highly correlated with cardiovascular issues, and hypertension is apparently the worst comorbidity with covid. I think a mostly vegan diet would probably be the best you can do as an individual to protect yourself from severe covid (aside from vaccination).
- ItsBob 5y ago
  > I think a mostly vegan diet would probably be the best you can do as an individual to protect yourself from severe covid I know two vegans, who don't know each other as it happens, and both of them have what I'd call a shitty diet. Sure, everything they eat is vegan but have you seen the contents of some vegan products? There are many things packed full of "filler". Especially stuff that comes in a box (although that's true of regular processed food too) It's not like vegans just eat a steaming pile of broccoli each meal. I'd say a diet that makes you healthier would be more appropriate: for some, that would be a high-animal-fat diet, others might be something else and so on. Edit: I get your point: eating healthier is key but to say vegan is probably the wrong way of putting it.
  - orangepurple 5y ago
    "Junk food vegan" is a thing
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    > It's not like vegans just eat a steaming pile of broccoli each meal. It depends on you know. Until recently (the last couple of years), vegans did tend to have very healthy whole-food diets, for the simple reason that processed foods were rarely vegan. That is different now, but I can see why people associate such a diet with veganism.
    - carlmr 5y ago
      Most of my vegan friends don't eat this trash, or only exceptionally, so it didn't really pop into my mind when I wrote my comment.

elric 5y ago

This strikes me as odd. Females tend to have more body fat than males, on average, yet females seem to fare better after Covid-19 infections. So either the adipose inflammation improves disease outcome (unlikely?), or the effect of this inflammation is neglible and other factors are more important? I only gave the paper a cursory glance, but it doesn't seem to address this issue.

legutierr 5y ago
Women tend to suffer more from long covid, however, per my understanding.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  long covid has very similar demographics to chronic fatigue syndrome. issues like these are very politicized, but it's likely that most of long covid is a combination of people who are having post-illness long-term sequelae and then also people with CFS-like symptoms, perhaps exacerbated by negative media coverage around covid and long covid.
  - rp1 5y ago
    Watching how poorly some professional athletes perform during long Covid recovery makes me highly doubt CFS as the root cause. Also, people have reported long-term loss of smell which also isn’t a typical post-illness or CFS thing.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      it's almost like you didn't read my comment. as i've said, long-term sequelae certainly exist - and they are different for covid probably. i also have had long-term loss of smell and modification of taste after getting a breakthrough delta case. that said, demographically (as well as by diversity of symptoms reported), it does appear that there is also a "CFS-like" disease population being super-imposed on top of those that are experiencing long-term sequelae. much of the conversation around long covid is also being funded by ME/CFS lobbying/patient advocacy groups [0]. i think there are two distinct phenomena, and the fact that women are over-represented as long covid patients may be due to the CFS-like phenomena rather than the sequelae one. [0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-cov...
      - melling 5y ago
        That’s an Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. They tend to not be trustworthy The Journal has told us twice this year that “Herd Immunity is Near” “Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial” https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despite-faucis-denial-11616624554 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despi...
        whimsicalism 5y ago
        i'm not citing the opinion piece as a general endorsement of the wall street journal, or even this article. merely citing it because it condenses the evidence showing that CFS patient advocacy groups are heavily funding many of the prominent long covid organizations.
        xorcist 5y ago
        Is this part of some weird political debate or something? The only thing I got out of that article is that one needs to count both the vaccinated and the recovered towards immunity levels, which is very much not controversial.
        5y ago
  - legutierr 5y ago
    Can you explain how negative media coverage is relevant here? How can a real illness that people are suffering from be affected at all by negative media coverage? Are you saying that it's something that people are imagining because they are being influenced by media reports? And what do you mean by "politicized"? Where has long covid been politicized? I haven't seen anything like that.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      > real illness that people are suffering from be affected at all by negative media coverage Real illnesses that people are suffering from can be psychosomatic or affected by mental status. There is a ton of stigma around suggestions like these, hence the subtext of your comment that a "real illness" is independent from mental state. > And what do you mean by "politicized"? Where has long covid been politicized? I haven't seen anything like that. If you are a researcher and your research suggests that many cases of long covid or CFS have a psychological component or are psychosomatically driven, you will get death threats as well as condemned by advocacy organizations. [0] That is what I mean by politicized. The underlying root of the issue is stigma around any sort of illness that has a psychological component. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-death-threats-for-scientists https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/chronic-f...
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        Is there any evidence that it is psychosomatic? My understanding is that CFS (and long covid which indeed appears to be similar) affects a wide range of people, most often after some kind of viral infection that is very much physical in nature. And furthermore that the most successful treatment programs tend to focus on careful regulating exercise and diet which again seems to be largely physical. Just because the underlying biological mechanism isn't understood doesn't mean that there isn't one. To me CFS seems like a case of a disease neglected by medical science because it's dismissed as being psychosomatic.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    Totally. Media coverage is why I suddenly started falling asleep during my work day and why my sense of smell and taste are still screwed up a year later. I can't taste oranges, cannot stand the smell or taste of tap water, and my office smells like an ash tray because CNN and MSNBC, and not because there's actually an issue. One of the very best ways to be insulting on this sort of an issue is to tell people that what they're experiencing is a fabrication of a media conspiracy that doesn't exist.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      1. Maybe actually read my comment, where I acknowledge that post-covid sequelae are absolutely a thing. I myself experienced long-term sense of smell screwups. 2. Psychological components of an illness are still an illness, and I'm not suggesting that long covid is a "fabrication." You need to get over your internalized stigma, psychological effects can be incredibly powerful. People experiencing CFS get similarly outraged when people suggest there is a psychological component to the disease. This is due to stigma. Indeed, if anything, CFS is good evidence of the strong impact that even a (probably) psychologically derived illness can have on one's physical well-being. 3. Even saying that something is at least partially driven by the media does not mean it is not a "serious" problem. Media coverage of high profile suicides leads to a measurable increase in the number of suicides in the general population. Those people killing themselves is not a "fabrication" and is in fact a really serious problem. i would be surprised if we hadn't seen something like cfs for covid emerge given the level of scary (to be clear, not irrationally scary, justifiably scary) media coverage around covid.
      - zajio1am 5y ago
        > This is due to stigma. Indeed, if anything, CFS is good evidence of the strong impact that even a (probably) psychologically derived illness can have on one's physical well-being. AFAIK there is no strong consensus that (even covid-unrelated) CFS is probably psychosomatic in constrast to, say, immunologic.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
  - yosito 5y ago
    I know people with long covid and people with CFS, and while there may be some overlapping symptoms that are common, they are decidedly different in most people.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      As I've said, "long covid" is an overloaded term right now. I'm also not going to be drawing conclusions from "I know some people X" and "other people Y." Hopefully the scientists studying this don't do that either.
  - vimy 5y ago
    CFS isn’t psychosomatic though. Enough research out there that disproves the ‘it’s all in your head’ theory. Long Covid _is_ CFS. Viruses and bacteria are always the trigger for CFS.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      > Enough research out there that disproves the ‘it’s all in your head’ theory. That is definitely not even close to the consensus opinion of the field. there have been a number of attempts to try to show viruses as causing cfs, they have been discredited, whereas the pace study has not. [0] post-aids patient advocacy, in clinical practice it has become incredibly unwise and unpopular to say that something is psychological in nature. even researchers who don't do anything in the clinic will still get death threats for suggesting otherwise. [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/471282a https://www.nature.com/articles/471282a
      - vimy 5y ago
        Pace has been debunked. The idea that is has become unpopular to say something is psychological in nature couldn’t be more wrong. Talk to CFS patients before you make statements like that. There is not a single CFS patient who hasn’t been accused of making it all up. Not. A. Single. One. Whenever a doctor doesn’t know the answer, it’s always psychological. It’s the easy way out. People like you piss me off to no end so I’m gonna stop replying.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
        you clearly have massive internal stigma against people with psychologically-based illness. this is not the same as "making it all up." this is exactly what i mean when i say this stuff is politicized. i disagree fundamentally with the epistemic theory of "trust people to know what is causing their illness, not doctors or researchers." e: for evidence of what this particular strain of "patient advocacy" looks like, just peruse through this person's previous comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398210), such as: > Alzheimer isn’t a disease but a symptom of chronic viruses and bacteria. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066504/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066504/ > People with Alzheimer have been cured after taking antibiotics.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    Any viral infection can cause some medium term effects. But most of the people with so called long-covid didn’t even test positive. They are just really convinced that they got it some time ago and that now they have long covid and the doctors are gaslighting them
GLGirty 5y ago
Maybe at levels of obesity where it affects mortality, the gender difference in fat composition is negligible?
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  > The age-adjusted prevalence of severe obesity among U.S. adults was 9.2% in 2017–2018. Women had a higher prevalence of severe obesity (11.5%) than men (6.9%). The prevalence was highest among adults aged 40–59 (11.5%), followed by adults aged 20–39 (9.1%) and adults aged 60 and over (5.8%). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm
mrob 5y ago
Obesity isn't the only risk factor. Here's a report on another mechanism of action that could increase risk for males: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/androgen-receptors-covid-19 https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/androgen-receptors...
deanjones 5y ago
Leaving aside all of the possible confounders for the difference in severity of Covid-19 infection in men and women, it's not the case that women on average have more body fat than men. So for a "healthy" man and a "healthy" woman, the woman would tend to have more fatty tissue, but more men are overweight. UK figures show that 40% of men are overweight, compared to 31% of women. In the US, 74% of men are overweight, compared to 67% of women.
- phonypc 5y ago
  The categories of overweight and obese are based on BMI, which is not relative proportion of body fat. On average, of a man and woman who both have a BMI of 30, the woman will have a higher proportion of body fat.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    I think both these claims can be true at the same time, can’t they? To make a toy example just to make the reasoning clear: if men’s BMI was distributed as 50% = 20, 50% = 35, and women’s BMI was distributed as 95% = 20, 5% = 35, the average body fat of all men would be higher than the average body fat of all women, even though the average body fat of women BMI=X would be higher than of men BMI=X for all X.
- davidjgraph 5y ago
  Those US figures are overweight or obese. The UK figures are likely overweight only. Over 60% of UK adults are overweight or obese [0] [0] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/risk/overweight-and-obesity#heading-One https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Do you have a link for those % stats? I'm not questioning the accuracy. Only that I want to share it with others (in a told ya so sorta way).
  - deanjones 5y ago

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

I'm going to issue 2 ignorant assumptions of mine and a "could it be" hypothesis, but assuming 1) That not a lot of Africans are obese and 2) Covid has so far not hit Africa that bad; Could it be that their lack of fat tissue is the reason? Yeah, this is the Internet and I could do research to confirm or deny 1) and 2), but hey I'm just here because I'm distracting myself from work right now.

belltaco 5y ago
There are several factors, higher Vitamin D levels because of time spent outdoors, median age of the population, co-morbidities including diabetes, levels and availability of testing and gathering data etc. etc.
whimsicalism 5y ago
likely much more to do with 1. poor testing 2. much younger skewing population compared to any other continent.
- hanselot 5y ago
  I love how people are able to rationalise things while turning a blind eye to something way more obvious. Africans are the least poisoned demographic obviously.
petesergeant 5y ago
> That not a lot of Africans are obese I don't think that's accurate. Eye-balling this[0], northern African and South African women are more obese than most European and US countries, and although men seem less obese, when you look at it overall, over 50-60% of adult South Africans and northern Africans are overweight or obese, compated to 75% of Americans. Obviously cherry-picking a bit here and ignoring western and most of sub-Saharan Africa, but I don't think "not a lot of Africans are obese" stands up as an assumption. [0] https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/?age=a&sex=f https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/?age=a&sex=f

rbartelme 5y ago

Preprints in biology do not carry the same weight as preprints in CS or physics.

carlmr 5y ago

It's a clue but not necessarily true. Being fat is also highly correlated with cardiovascular issues, and hypertension is apparently the worst comorbidity with covid. I think a mostly vegan diet would probably be the best you can do as an individual to protect yourself from severe covid (aside from vaccination).

ItsBob 5y ago
> I think a mostly vegan diet would probably be the best you can do as an individual to protect yourself from severe covid I know two vegans, who don't know each other as it happens, and both of them have what I'd call a shitty diet. Sure, everything they eat is vegan but have you seen the contents of some vegan products? There are many things packed full of "filler". Especially stuff that comes in a box (although that's true of regular processed food too) It's not like vegans just eat a steaming pile of broccoli each meal. I'd say a diet that makes you healthier would be more appropriate: for some, that would be a high-animal-fat diet, others might be something else and so on. Edit: I get your point: eating healthier is key but to say vegan is probably the wrong way of putting it.
- orangepurple 5y ago
  "Junk food vegan" is a thing
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > It's not like vegans just eat a steaming pile of broccoli each meal. It depends on you know. Until recently (the last couple of years), vegans did tend to have very healthy whole-food diets, for the simple reason that processed foods were rarely vegan. That is different now, but I can see why people associate such a diet with veganism.
  - carlmr 5y ago
    Most of my vegan friends don't eat this trash, or only exceptionally, so it didn't really pop into my mind when I wrote my comment.