in which i rage a little
you have no idea how much time and intention i put into overcoming that shitty “everyone is stupid” attitude smart people often fall prey to and which turns them into assholes, only to end up in this timeline where a third of the population is demonstrably, irrefutably stupid
i mean i used to say that people may look stupid from the outside, but if you understand their actual specific circumstances, most people’s behavior and decisions are actually rational in context
but here we are!
…adults railing against wearing masks and getting vaccines during A DEADLY GLOBAL PANDEMIC, because some bullshit about their “rights” being infringed
…people voting on the single platform of provincial, ignorant fucking racism (see: trump and brexit) and nostalgia for the fake era of 50’s american prosperity
…we just had a record-breakingly insane heat dome and shit’s on fire (as of the time of writing, cle elum has an evac order) AND we’re in a drought. plus most if not all of both WA and OR have official moratoriums on fireworks, but motherfuckers are out there BLOWING OFF FIREWORKS aka this neighborhood sounds like fucking afghanistan in 2010 because LET’S RAIN DOWN SHIT THAT’S EITHER ON FIRE OR JUST MERELY VERY GODDAMNED HOT on dry grasses
…if you watch broadcast TV, which you don’t if you’re under 45, because why the fuck would you, and you lack sufficient critical thinking skills, you probably think that a lot of those snake oil products you see advertised are actually legit because they’re on TV and you don’t know that whatever regulatory bodies that should be protecting you from such garbage lack the funding to do so
…the preponderance of our citizenry really feel that they not only can but should drive everywhere, all the time, because they lack the ability to imagine any other way, like, people will straight up fucking drive a tenth of a mile and back rather than walk or cycle simply because society is so incredibly, horribly, wastefully car-centric and while i have sympathy for thinking this (there are so many mechanisms in place to cause people to think this way) i also require people to FUCKING DO BETTER
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… Americans, having eaten themselves so fat and metabolically ill that they are significantly less able to survive an otherwise easily survivable illness, locked down and got even fatter.
Whoa, what? You think Covid-19 is “easily survivable”? And is somehow harmless for lean people?
What the fuck idiotic online rabbit hole have you fallen down?
Young healthy people and children die of Covid every single day. There’s zero evidence gaining the lock-down equivalent of freshman 15 has *ANY* impact on survivability.
We know this disease kills, and suspect that Long Covid might be a permanent disability. It may be easily survivable in many circumstances, but we don’t know what those circumstances even ARE yet. Nobody knows why some people die and others don’t. Nobody knows why this disease destroys organs. Nobody knows why some people are completely asymptomatic. If the experts don’t understand it yet, YOU don’t know shit about it, either.
Now, gaining weight isn’t ideal, and it makes your joints and feet hurt, sure, and yes there are long-term effects on certain health outcomes, but it’s not nearly as significant as dying on a ventilator of fucking Covid, and it’s not a moral failing. Weight gain is a complex issue, encompassing childhood diet, food deserts, fad diets, hormones, mental health, medications, and more.
There are two kinds of thin people: those who are genetically thin for whom thinness is effortless, and those who obsess about it day after day, decade after decade, because they care more about how they look than anything else. If weight loss were simple to achieve and easy to maintain, nobody would be fat. It’s not laziness or ignorance.
I mean, seriously, fat shaming? During a pandemic? That’s your angle?
The first stats to come out of NYC showed that 98% of hospitalized covid patients had one or more underlying conditions. The top 5 were hypertension, obesity, diabetes, morbid obesity, and coronary heart disease. It was obvious from the very start that poor lifestyle choices make covid far more lethal. Another study found a strong association between low HDL/high triglycerides and poor covid outcomes; low HDL/high trigs is a huge red flag for insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. And, in addition to 70% of Americans being overweight or heavier, and 43% being obese, a study found that 80% of covid patients are Vitamin D deficient.
But, enough with me and my rabbit hole. Here’s what the World Obesity Federation has to say about it:
https://www.worldobesityday.org/assets/downloads/COVID-19-and-Obesity-The-2021-Atlas.pdf
“As we show in this report, increased bodyweight is the second greatest
predictor of hospitalisation and a high risk of death for people suffering
from COVID-19. Only old age rates as a higher risk factor.
The unprecedented economic costs of COVID-19 are largely due to the
measures taken to avoid the excess hospitalisation and need for treatment
of the disease. Reducing one major risk factor, overweight, would have
resulted in far less stress on health services and reduced the need to
protect those services from being overwhelmed.
We show that in those countries where overweight affects only a minority
of the adult population, the rates of death from COVID-19 are typically less
than one tenth the levels found in countries where overweight affects the
majority of adults.
We also show that the drivers of overweight – especially high levels of
consumption of processed foods – are associated with mortality from
COVID-19.
Lastly, we show that COVID-19 is not a special case: a number of other
respiratory viruses lead to more severe consequences in people living with
excess bodyweight, giving good reasons to expect the next pandemic to
have similar effects. “