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You know. Everyone knows.

I really, really don't get your point. BMI might not be flawless as a measurement (there are better ones), but obesity is an established medical diagnosis with well known concrete negative health effects with tons of research throughout the decades, so I'm not sure what "rhetoric" you're referring to? Yes, it's a complex condition influenced by many factors, including genetic and socioeconomic ones, but regardless of what combination of factors causes it, it doesn't change the fact that an obese person is, well, obese. It's a medical term, not some arbitrary label assigned to someone in order to discriminate or create stigma. I think the article is just trying to spin the latest research on obesity and covid-19 into some sort of a social issue, which in my opinion is a very weird thing to do here.

Seriously how in the fuck did China go from having 100k cases to having zero when everyone else is not even coming close to replicating that level of success?

The Sun, yuk.

Tried golf once but was useless at it, Not very relaxing when you are hacking away at the dirt getting the arse just trying to get the ball to move 2 inches down the fairway.. I just don't have the patience for it. If the ball was the size of a headgehog rather than a chicken egg I might be better at it... Love it on the PC but not in real life.. One of my old bosses was a keen golfer and he told me once that they organised a golf weekend for some of the bigwigs in the company and he was invited along because he was fairly good and he got paired up with some bloke quite high up in the company and he said it was the worst weekend of his life, apparently this bloke was so bad that the people behind them were constantly complaining about waiting and at one point during the game the bloke lost his temper with it so badly he threw all his clubs in the pond...

Obesity rates of hospitalised cases might generally match national obesity rates (although I'm not sure that's true - for example in the French study the obesity rate of hospitalised patients was 70%, whereas the national obesity rate in France is only 17%), but that doesn't mean that the researchers simply "see a large portion of obese people and assume that’s a health risk", that's a ridiculous claim. First of all, obesity itself is the main proven risk factor for other observed comorbidities of covid-19 (diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, chronical inflammation); and not only that - it's pretty much a risk factor for anything health-related and a primary driver of many chronic illnesses. The article also conveniently ignores other studies from numerous countries which demonstrate that the proportion of cases that develop severe pneumonia and require mechanical ventilation is by far higher in those with obesity than in those without, even when controlled for potential confounders and independently from other comorbidities. Yes, there should be more research done and more data collected, but at this point everything points at obesity being a factor associated with a more severe course of the disease and more negative outcomes, so I'm not sure why we should pussyfoot around it based on some weird claim that such facts are somehow harmful to the obese because it creates stigma. Normalisation of obesity is what's harmful to the public health, not scientific research pointing it out as one of the risk factors.

I'd heard some people were having Covid-19 parties for the same reason. I still think with the virus being new, it's probably too early to be trying something like that in places where healthcare systems can potentially get overwhelmed like we saw with Italy. But if there's no vaccine, I can see that sort of stuff being done to build up an immunity in kids. It's hard to really say though, because so little is known about the virus and what the long terms effects are. They say it's not that bad for kids, but I do know the US had an infant death from it a few weeks ago. Yeah, I agree with that take on that article. I sort of rolled my eyes with that editorial note explaining how "fat-activist friendly terms will be used" when it's meant to be a health article, and the correct medical term to be using throughout the article is "obese." Asking us to separate being obese from the number of health issues that can stem from obesity doesn't really make sense, when we're discussing obesity as a medical issue in the face of a global health crisis.

I'll be honest, I'm at loss at what is the actual point of this article? Questioning whether obesity alone is an independent factor for higher risk of covid-19 complications or whether it's a combination of factors is one thing, but it soon went into "fat activists" (whatever the fuck it is) rambling about the society and scientists interpreting the research data being "fatphobic" and claiming that it's harmful to attribute obesity to negative outcomes because it causes stigma and daily discrimination to those of "higher weight" The best part was the claim that apparently it's not being obese but the stigma associated with it that jeopardises their health, as it "can increase the likelihood of chronic inflammation, which is in turn linked to diseases that increase COVID-19 risk such as heart disease, cancer, asthma, and diabetes". What a load of bollocks. They should be encouraging obese people to change their diets and lifestyles to improve their general health instead of accusing researchers of having prejudices against "fat bodies"...

I had my back turned. The filthy scumbag blindsided me

Fuck off Deadlinesmans twin

Watched The Shallows, a decent movie with good thrills. Visually beautiful.