I dont think you really are.
Um… okay then. Believe what you want.
1 Like
Or just measure body fat directly. If not by machine, pinching the skin usually gives you a pretty good idea, especially around the belly area.
@John.S.Mill so you’re saying that an 18 year old person with a 25 BMI is at higher risk for complications from COVID than a 49 year old with a BMI of like 20 in a state that would put the 18 year old ahead of the 49 year old? i call bullshit on that. That’s a really piss poor priority list there. I’m thinking the 49 year old is at higher risk because they are older and a 25 BMI isn’t really a risk factor at all.
All Minnesotans 16 and older will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccine starting March 30
…not because they have an overabundance of supply…“vaccinators will be asked to prioritize those who are the most vulnerable…But removing eligibility restrictions would provide clinics, pharmacies and others with the ability to avoid bottlenecks in the vaccine rollout.”
We are not fat, just short for our weight.
1 Like
At a population level, all restrictions/classifications aren’t going to be exact risk measures (if there were such a thing). You need something easily understandable, ideally demonstrable, and strongly correlated with risk. Is it fair? Certainly not in the democratic idea that we are all equal. But the basic premise isn’t fairness, it is to reduce the impact as quickly as possible. You could probably risk-sort your own family in order pretty quickly, fannie, but try that with 350M people, not all of whom will text you back.
I don’t think “overweight” should be considered a risk factor at all. “Obese” maybe. Once you put overweight in the mix, you’re including way too many people while also excluding people who probably do have more risk due to their age. At that point, you need to open it up to everyone.
In New York, I don’t think that “overweight” is included. “Obese” is. I doubt they will prioritize people who are overweight, but not obese prior to opening it up to everyone. Seems like they are going by age at this point.
BMI was developed from a small group of men. It’s not great for women, or for men from other ethnic groups. I mean, if you weigh a whole lot and you are short, yeah, that’s unhealthy. But the “overweight” threshold is not unhealthy for a typical woman. I’m not sure that a BMI of 25 is any worse than a BMI of 20 for most women.
The obese threshold is high enough that pretty much everyone who hits it is at least overweight, from a health perspective. And the “underweight” threshold is also unhealthy for most people. But I agree with ao fan here, an otherwise healthy 18 year old woman with a BMI of 25 is not at high risk of covid complications.
None of the priority lists is perfect, and they really can’t be if they are going to be simple enough to use. But some seem worse than others.
1 Like
The problem in fine risk ranking is partly getting accurate data in a timely manner.
It makes sense that overweight is less risky than obese, but at middle age and lower the overall qx is so low that I would guess age (in those ranges) doesn’t correlate strongly with risk. The counterpoint is excess deaths that are possibly quarantine related are relatively high at young adult-middle age, and the vaccine is also intended to allow people to resume a more normal life.
And anecdotally, my sibs and I have had very little in the way of side effects so far. We live in various states, but I think we all received Pfizer. Hope everyone else is as fortunate as we have been.
That reminded me (more anecdotes), my kid who worked on the COVID ward said the non-elderly were almost all either obese to morbidly so, or the severely underweight (which might commonly be substance abusers).
Yeah, my brother said that he knew obesity was a risk factor really early on, just by looking at photos of victims on TV.
Interestingly, being “obese” becomes a less significant risk factor as you get older. I’m right on the lower border of obese, and I spent a fair amount of time looking at my risk either way, and the tool I was using showed a graph by age. I’m old enough that the impact of obesity on covid is beginning to shrink. Which… I guess is sort of comforting?
(i didn’t look at the curves for morbidly obese. The morbidly obese tend to have a lot of other health issues, though, so they are probably at increased risk all the way up, if only because those other health factors weren’t all separated out in the data.)
that is a lot of things I didn’t say
you’re right, a person 150 years old with a BMI of 15 is certainly at a higher risk than someone age 1 with a BMI of 30. BMI is clearly useless! Silly me.
1 Like
you qualified it with “an otherwise healthy 18 year old”, so I would say…duh
The BMI benchmark is age agnostic, just like the age benchmark is BMI agnostic, and every other benchmark is every other factor agnostic.
It’s your typical rating plan.
Yeah, but my point is that most women with a BMI of 25 are healthy. Sure, there are some who have no muscle mass and light bones who are actually overweight. But most women actually aren’t overweight, from a health perspective, at a BMI of 25.
actually, replace where I said age 49 with a bmi of 20 to a person age 64 with a bmi of 20. If I’m reading this right, in Virginia, a person who is age 64 with a BMI of 20 is not eligible for the vaccine, but a person who is age 18 with a bmi of 25 is eligible for the vaccine. that’s insane.
1 Like
I never said BMI is useless. I said that a BMI of 25 is not a risk factor. certainly not compared to age. A BMI over 30 might be a risk factor.
Or waist and weight for men;
Waist, hips, wrist, forearm, and weight for women.
Making another thread.
well, I don’t have the stats to refute that. I assume it was established to be “overweight” for a reason. And if it were supposed to be for men only, then it concerns me even more that a bunch of old school medical professionals did not realize this and have been using it for both men and women for decades.
Not that I care, everyone knows it’s a shit metric nowadays.
1 Like