With all the chatter about the potential for vaccine passports, anyone who has been out and about recently may wonder if some people have obesity passports.
For whatever reasons, public health authorities have been very silent during the coronavirus pandemic about the importance of exercise and diet when it comes strengthening one’s immune system even as American becomes more and more obese.
Even the CDC, in a March 2021 report, has admitted that “Obesity increases the risk for severe COVID-19–associated illness.” In the study of about 150,000 COVID-diagnosed adults, based on a body mass index, 50.2 percent were deemed obese and 27.8 percent were classified as overweight. This constitutes nearly 80 percent of those infected.
Individuals can obviously exercise without a health club membership, but was it really necessary, at least in retrospect, for politicians to insist on shutting down gyms, even gyms that implemented various safety protocols (including in what’s now included under the term “hygiene theater*”)?
Relentlessly anti-Trump, HBO Real Time host Bill Maher weighed in, as it were, on the CDC data and what it suggests about the medical establishment:
I think a lot of people died [from COVID] because talking about obesity had become a third rail in America…[obesity] is the key piece of the puzzle, by far the most pertinent factor, but you dare not speak its name. Imagine how many lives could have been saved if there had been some national campaign a la Michelle Obama’s ‘let’s move’ program, with the urgency of the pandemic behind it.
If the media and the doctors had made a point to keep saying ‘but there’s something you can do,’ but we’ll never know, because they never did. Because the last thing you want to do is say something insensitive. We would literally rather die.
Instead, we were told to lock down. Unfortunately, the killer was already in the house. And her name is ‘Little Debbie.’*
[*desert snack products]
A study published this month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine of about 50,000 California adults from January through October 2020 found a purported correlation between the corona and coach-potato status, which should come as no real surprise on a common-sense basis.
Patients with COVID-19 who were consistently inactive during the 2 years preceding the pandemic were more likely to be hospitalised, admitted to the intensive care unit and die than patients who were consistently meeting physical activity guidelines. Other than advanced age and a history of organ transplant, physical inactivity was the strongest risk factor for severe COVID-19 outcomes.
The above-referenced guidelines call for 2-1/2 hours of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week.
“We recommend efforts to promote physical activity be prioritised by public health agencies and incorporated into routine medical care,” the study concluded.
Read these reports as linked above and draw your own conclusions.
Reacting to the study, even the Big Pharma-loving New York Times admitted that “The data were gathered before Covid vaccines became available and do not suggest that exercise can substitute in any way for immunization. But they do intimate that regular exercise…can substantially lower our chances of becoming seriously ill if we do become infected.”
Writes Joe Kinsey of Outkick about the same study: “Look, we don’t need scientists or the New York Times nerds to tell us that those who exercise are less likely to get drilled by the ‘VID. We have brains and can use them. It doesn’t take an Ivy League genius to conclude that crushing beers on the couch, breaded wings in a Buffalo Wild Wings booth, eating Doritos, mixing in a Diet Coke — or eight — and eating a handful of cookies right before bed isn’t the best defense against a respiratory virus.”
“Instead of mandating lockdowns, we should have mandated exercise. And eating less fatty foods. Shutting down beaches, parks, and outdoor trails will likely rank as one of the absolute dumbest governmental decisions of all time since we now know the odds of covid spreading outdoors are virtually zero. Instead of telling people to stay in their homes, we should have been encouraging everyone to be outdoors getting exercise,” Outkick founder Clay Travis added.
Note: Holistic-oriented nutritionists contend that saturated fats, as opposed to other fats, are an important part of a healthy diet.
Parenthetically, a group of about 800 retired U.S. military leaders in a group called Mission Readiness claims that nearly three-fourths of potential recruits are ineligible in the age 17 to 24 cohort to serve “because they are too poorly educated, too overweight, or have a history of crime or substance abuse,”
Technology that is brought to bear on medical emergencies in the U.S. is fantastic. When it comes to treating chronic disease, however, western medicine seems to, in general, focus on addressing symptoms rather than the underlying cause.
This medical doctor wonders why TV star Dr. Anthony Fauci hardly ever mentioned the importance of a healthy lifestyle, which he characterized as a huge miss by the director of U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the public health hierarchy generally.
“He had the pulpit; he had millions of eyes and ears on him….even if 10 percent of the people had thought, ‘hmm, okay Dr. Fauci is saying it, maybe that it is a good thing to address my lifestyle now and work on these measures that could well help me with COVID, but will have effects beyond COVID.’
“We know that being obese is a big immune suppressant; that’s scientifically proven. And conversely, a healthy lifestyle, even trying to lead a healthy lifestyle can be a massive immune boost.”
Watch:
No one, even a workout warrior, knows what’s around the corner in terms of their well-being and possible challenges thereto, so to everyone, the best of health, and stay safe.
For more of my work, please visit BizPac Review.
*A revised CDC guidance for COVID released on April 5, 2021, states that “It is possible for people to be infected through contact with contaminated surfaces or objects (fomites), but the risk is generally considered to be low.”
