Obesity, vaccines, & COVID: what the data REALLY say

The Kevin Bass Show

This episode examines the purported connection between obesity and COVID outcomes.

While obesity does somewhat worsen COVID outcomes, the impact is modest and dramatically overstated.

These data have also been weaponized by antivaxxers and politicians for cynical ends.

Many COVID-obesity narratives create a false dichotomy between vaccination and obesity, suggesting that what we really need is to fight obesity, not vaccinate.

Let us look at the data.

First, mild obesity confers only a very modest, almost undetectable increased risk of death, and severe obesity gives a risk comparable to being male or black. Even severe obesity is outshined by simply having 2-5 medical conditions, or being an organ transplant recipient (PMIDs: 32640463, 34197283).

Now let's compare all of these to vaccination status. Obesity and vaccination are not even in the same ballpark. Obesity provides paltry additional risk compared to being unvaccinated (PMID 34529637).

For completeness, let us compare all of these to age. We can see that not only does age dominate, but it dominates overwhelmingly.

COVID deaths are driven by age first, unvaccinated status second, the presence of serious medical conditions third, and then by an equal mix of obesity and other risk factors like being black, being underweight, being male, etc.

A common statistic bandied about: "80% of deaths/complications/etc. are in people with obesity!!!"

Actually, the stat is: 78% of Americans hospitalized for COVID are overweight or obese.

But here’s another stat: 74% of American adults are overweight or obese.

In other words, the % of obese people in the hospital with serious Covid roughly matches the % of obese people in the US. Therefore you can’t point to the % of obese people and say it was caused by obesity, because the sick folks simply mirror the available population.

Media outlets have pushed this statistic, despite it actually showing that obesity doesn’t have much of an impact on COVID, because it drives clicks and advertising revenue.

Don’t let this trash colonize your mind.

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