A vicious cycle...Posted on 12/09/2021 10:01:05 PM PST by SeekAndFind
p>Since the beginning of the pandemic, one of the most common denominators in deaths and severe Covid is obesity.A vicious cycle...
Pre-vaccine, 73% of those who died of (or with) Covid-19 were either overweight or obese - which tracks with the percentage of overweight and obese Americans.
Distribution of deaths among adults hospitalized for COVID-19 in the United States from March to December 2020, by body mass index
In addition to having generally poor circulatory health, an obese person is more likely to have other conditions that are risk factors for severe Covid, including low-level inflammation, diabetes and lung disease.
A September 2020 meta-analysis suggested a linear relationship between BMI and Covid-19 severity and mortality.
Meanwhile, and this is unrelated to the point of this article - 75% of Covid deaths to date (unvaxxed and vaxxed) in the United States are retirement age or older, with another 18% between the ages of 50 and 64-years-old. So the vast majority of US Covid deaths are in older Americans, 73% or so of whom are overweight or obese.
Number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths in the U.S. as of December 8, 2021, by age*
Now, scientists may have a clue as to why Covid affects fat people more severely - it infects both fat cells and certain immune cells within body fat, prompting the body to respond aggressively, according to the New York Times, citing a study published in October.
"The bottom line is, ‘Oh my god, indeed, the virus can infect fat cells directly,'" said Dr. Philipp Scherer, a scientist who studies fat cells at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who was not involved in the research.
"Whatever happens in fat doesn’t stay in fat," he continued. "It affects neighboring tissues as well."
The research has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, but it was posted online in October. If the findings hold up, they may shed light not just on why patients with excess pounds are vulnerable to the virus, but also on why certain younger adults with no other risks become so ill.
The study’s senior authors, Dr. Tracey McLaughlin and Dr. Catherine Blish of the Stanford University School of Medicine, suggested the evidence could point to new Covid treatments that target body fat.
...
The finding is particularly relevant to the United States, which has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world. Most American adults are overweight, and 42 percent have obesity. Black, Hispanic, Native American and Alaska Native people in the U.S. have higher obesity rates than white adults and Asian Americans; they have also been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with death rates roughly double those of white Americans. -NY Times
"Maybe that’s the Achilles’ heel that the virus utilizes to evade our protective immune responses — by hiding in this place," said Dr. Vishwa Deep Dixit, a professor of comparative medicine and immunology at Yale School of Medicine.
According to Stanford's Dr. Blish, "This could well be contributing to severe disease ... We’re seeing the same inflammatory cytokines that I see in the blood of the really sick patients being produced in response to infection of those tissues."
Mysteries of fat...
As the Times notes, body fat is more than just an inert form of energy storage. On the contrary, fat is biologically active, and produces both hormones and immune-system proteins that affect nearby cells, causing a persistent low-grade inflammation regardless of any actual infection.
Inflammation is the body’s response to an invader, and sometimes it can be so vigorous that it is more harmful than the infection that triggered it. “The more fat mass, and in particular visceral fat mass, the worse your inflammatory response,” Dr. McLaughlin said, referring to the abdominal fat that surrounds internal organs.
Fat tissue is composed mostly of fat cells, or adipocytes. It also contains pre-adipocytes, which mature into fat cells, and a variety of immune cells, including a type called adipose tissue macrophages. -NY Times
As part of the study, Dr. McLaughlin, Blish and other colleagues experimented on fat obtained from bariatric surgery to see if the tissue would become infected with Covid. They found that yes, they could - but certain immune cells known as macrophages were also susceptible, and produced a 'robust' inflammatory response. The team also analyzed fat cells from Europeans who had died of Covid, and found the disease contained within fat near various organs.
According to Johns Hopkins professor of cardiology, Dr. David Kass, a man whose ideal weight is 170 lbs, yet who weighs 250 lbs, is carrying a substantial amount of fat in which the virus can 'hang out' - where it can then replicate and trigger a 'destructive immune system response.'
"If you really are very obese, fat is the biggest single organ in your body," said Kass, who added that Covid "can infect that tissue and actually reside there."
"Whether it hurts it, kills it or at best, it’s a place to amplify itself — it doesn’t matter. It becomes kind of a reservoir."
And as journalist Alex Berenson wrote in July...
In April, British researchers published a definitive paper on the subject in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, a peer-reviewed journal. The researchers examined the medical records of almost 7 million people in England to look at the link between obesity and severe outcomes from Covid, including hospitalization and death.
The topline findings show only a moderate link between extra weight and Covid risk. But when the researchers looked more closely, they found that’s because in older people, being overweight does NOT drive excess risk.
So the researchers divided the patients into four age ranges: 20-39, 40-59, 60-79, and over 80. They found that in the two younger groups - including adults up to age 60 - being obese was associated with nearly ALL the risk that Covid would lead to intensive care or death. The findings held even after they adjusted for many different potential confounding factors, like smoking, non-weight-related illnesses, and wealth.
The excess risk was extremely high even for people who weren’t morbidly obese - defined as a body-mass index of 40 or more. A person between 40 and 60 with a BMI of 35 - someone who is 230 pounds and 5’8” - had about five times the risk of dying of Covid of a person of normal weight. For younger adults, the excess risk was even higher, and for morbidly obese people even higher still.
In contrast, people of normal weight under 40 are at essentially no risk of death from Covid. The researchers found their rate to be under 1 in 10,000 per year. Even in the 40 to 59 age range, normal-weight adults had an annual risk well under 1 in 1,000.
* * *
Lose the weight, folks. And for those who need to shed pounds fast, a ketogenic diet may actually act as a preventative measure.
So it’s a virus that targets fat people! Good news! Oh, wait a minute...
Before we figure out this question, first we need to understand the more basic truths about this phenomenon that caused the shutdown.
You can’t understand anything until the basics are established. This is the nature of logical analysis and it applies to the interaction of all objects and events in the universe.
There is more of them for it to hit [fat people].
Canines don’t get it either. Why doesn’t somebody look into that and figure out why?
Everything hits fat people harder. Duh! Drop a fat person off a step ladder. Wham! It leaves a mark.
The difference - I got the monoclonal antibody treatment immediately and stayed home taking Ivermectin, while he went the hospital route.
I mention my case just so those with excess body weight can know that COVID is not an automatic death sentence.
I think more fat people drop tests could further our general knowledge. The tests should be filmed in slow motion and uploaded to youtube for additional feedback.
.02:
Total BS.
Many examples out there, but here’s one from my sphere:
35 year old I know personally, normal BMI, got infected just after Thanksgiving, still sick.
They may or may not figure it out before the virus is endemic, but point of fact:
1. If the ‘vaccines’ worked, this wouldn’t matter,
2. If the guy I know had done absolutely anything in terms of well-known treatments - all of which have been well discussed here at FR - then he wouldn’t still be sick, facing hospitalization.
And no, there are no comorbidities with him. Zero. Perfect health (at least until almost 2 weeks ago).
It really doesn’t matter why, what matters is that the narrative is false and it is not a grave threat to everyone equally, including kids, the risk is narrow and limited and the one size fits all draconian policies are wrong.
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I think more tests on fat people is a little extreme but I think testing these effing vaccines on the world is extreme, criminal, and should be addressed with extreme prejudice.
And yet Chris Christie is still alive.
Meanwhile it has been known from the get go that obesity is a major comorbidity and yet we have heard nary a word to the general public about losing weight to lower your risk of a bad outcome from Covid.
My brother is obese, diabetic, alcoholic, has kidney problems, and a few other health issues and weathered Covid just fine. He was over it in a few days and did not need hospitalization.
A relative in their 80’s and previously a heavy smoker succumbed to it after some time in the hospital. I don’t know if they vented them, but probably, but at 85, stuff happens. And likely damage from years of smoking played a role.
How fat is too fat? Asking for a friend…
Recently, a large-scale population-based study (Bhaskaran K, Rentsch CT, MacKenna B, et al. HIV infection and COVID-19 death: a population-based cohort analysis of UK primary care data and linked national death registrations within the OpenSAFELY platform. Lancet HIV 2021;8:e24–32) with over 17 million individuals was performed in England to investigate the association of HIV co-infection and the risk of COVID-19 mortality, and found that people living with HIV had a higher risk of COVID-19 mortality than those without HIV after adjusting for age and sex (HR = 2.90, 95% CI 1.96–4.30). If we combined the COVID-19 epidemic information around the world, would this relationship hold up as well as the England study? Are there differences among different countries? So far there needs to be more study on the role of HIV in COVID mortality.
Canines don’t get it either.”
Bet it would take down Jabba the Hutt in short order.
Oh brother. If you read it carefully, it never said fit and trim people are exempt from death and it never said fat people died 100% of the time.
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