The Weight of COVID
The Weight of COVID
Equality - Let Alone Equity - of Risk was False
Thanks again to the California globe for running this piece. You can visit the website at: https://californiaglobe.com/
It turns out that around the world, around the nation, and in California itself the severity of the impact of catching COVID was not equally distributed and, like most other diseases, it struck certain groups harder than others.
In COVID’s case, it was the old and the obese.
While it was strongly suspected from early on in the pandemic that the elderly and unhealthy – specifically the obese – were the most vulnerable populations, Dr. Anthony Fauci and his fellow pandemicists downplayed the risk differential in favor of an “Everyone’s Gonna Die!!” public message specifically tailored to enforce the lockdown, masking, social distancing, and vaccination dictates they had created.
While there are many not-at-all flattering theories as to why this happened – money, power, elections, the ability to increase societal surveillance while simultaneously limiting long-sacred personal freedoms, etc. – it cannot be forgotten that Fauci took much the same tack, an ‘everyone is at similar risk, so bow down before my bureaucratic expertise’ strategy, in his handling of the emergence of AIDS.
The “sun rises in the west” denial of the efficacy of natural immunity and the soft-pedaling of the well-established fact that the obese are particularly vulnerable to airborne viruses as they tend to have reduced respiratory capacity and less well-functioning T-cells engendered by such a strategy led to resources being diverted from high-risk populations, causing untold suffering.
As with nursing homes being forced to accept COVID patients, and not just in New York - https://capitalandmain.com/los-angeles-public-health-dept-approved-covid-transfers-to-poorly-rated-nursing-homes-0618 - this “equity of risk” idea was – from the relatively early stage of the pandemic – clearly not the best way to save lives and limit societal damage; it was, in fact, the opposite.
Three years from the closure of society, the numbers available now are crystal clear – age and weight mattered more than Fauci let on.
(Note – there is much debate over the accuracy of pretty much every number related to the pandemic. However, for the purposes of this article - which is to compare similarly obtained statistics – that issue is less relevant. In other words, while the apples may be bruised and wormy it remains an apples-to-apples comparison.)
Internationally, it is almost assuredly not a coincidence that the countries – mostly Asian nations - that have lower rates of obesity also had lower rate of COVID deaths -
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality and https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/obesity-rates-by-country . The numbers do not track exactly, but the trend is quite clear and it becomes clearer moving closer to home.
Of the five most obese states in the America, three of them also ranked in the highest death rate top five – the other two placed sixth and eleventh.
Looking at the five thinnest states, three of the top six are also in the “six lowest rate of COVID deaths” category.
California and Florida have surprisingly similar – and relatively low - obesity rates and both preformed about the same when comparing death rates, despite the vastly less tyrannical approach Florida took to the pandemic - https://californiaglobe.com/articles/florida-bests-california-again-this-time-in-covid-outcomes/ .
In California, the ethnic demographic with the lowest obesity rate – Asian-Americans – had a significantly lower death rate. In fact, the Asian population was the only demographic group whose death rate was lower than its percentage of the state population.
The numbers break out as follows:
· The Hispanic share of the population is 39%, their obesity rate is 37%, and their death rate (i.e. the percentage of the total number of deaths – about 100,000 – in the state) was 42% (again, 42% of total deaths, not 42% of all Hispanics.)
· For white people, their share of the population is 37%, their obesity rate is 26%, and the death rate was 36%. The black percentage of state population is 6%, the obesity rate is 40%, and the death rate was 7%.
· The Black percentage of state population is 6%, the obesity rate is 40%, and the death rate was 7%.
· Quite differently, Asians make up 15% of Californians, have an obesity rate of 10%, and a death rate of only 11%, making this demographic group the only one in the state – across all delineated age brackets as well – to have a death rate lower than its share of the state’s population.
The age group statistics - https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/Age-Race-Ethnicity.aspx - show definitively the vastly increased risk of dying from COVID for the elderly.
66% of Californians are under the age of 50; they accounted for 8% of the deaths. 4% of the population is over 80 years old – they accounted for 38% of the deaths (again, the Asian “advantage” holds true for every age group.)
And vaccination rates do not seem to be as accurate as death rate predictors as age and weight - https://covid19.ca.gov/vaccination-progress-data/#age-ethnicity . Asians under 50 were far more likely to be vaccinated than other demographic groups and a bit more likely when aged between 50 and 64. The vaccination rate difference disappears entirely for those over 65, again hinting at the oversized role obesity played.
But – as with the national response – California’s oppressive system also turned out to not be properly targets at the highest-risk groups. True, vaccinations were made available by age and health status, but little else about the state’s overbearing response actually took into account known elevated risks.
For confirmation of that “once size fits all,” Fauci-esque approach, one only has to look at the public service announcements and other information aired by the state.
Here’s a short public service announcement (PSA) on how art can be used to convince people to get vaccinated and empower the LGBTQIA+ commmunity:
And here’s a look at students being happy to be able to graduate and animated lesbians:
And no PSA campaign would be complete with the First Partner feeling the public’s pain urging everyone (unless you’re going to the French Laundry with a bunch of donors) to stay home:
Broadcasting a message that is absolutely wrong was a common theme of California’s public campaigns.
Here’s one on age doesn’t matter when it comes to risk:
and one on celebrating holidays properly:
and one on how wearing a mask shows you care about other people:
Finally, an ad telling people to stay home (I think – it’s very odd because I’m pretty sure if you have people over to your home you are staying home):
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Around the world, COVID was bad for most people, though very very good for others like the Davos crowd, the censorship-industrial complex, and people like Anthony and Gavin.
Keeping high-risk elderly people all together was not a wise idea, nor - if you wanted to keep people happier, healthier, thinner, and aliver - was immobilizing people in their homes.
You would think – what with the crippling of society for years to come – they could have at least known how to save more lives.