I don’t know why you’ve gotten downvotes, but it’s true. For example one of the strongest predictors of severe COVID-19 is obesity, but not a peep about maintaining a healthy diet or regular exercise from our top doctors during the entire pandemic.

If the CDC launched a national effort to get Americans outdoors to exercise (Surely a lot cheaper than the stimulus we spent money on) hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved, not only from COVID but from diabetes and heart disease.

Nah, they would be demonized for trying to control people's bodies.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/michelle-obama-responds-to-ba...

Obesity is killing people for decades now.

Telling people "just get fit" doesn't work.

Covid did motivate a few folks I know to start hiking, even without a government push.

Everyone always trots this one out but it’s horse sh*t. There have been long standing widespread efforts in basically every country to raise the awareness of obesity and the benefits of a balanced diet and exercise. These are enormous public health campaigns which continually fall on deaf ears because people would rather not change their behaviour. These messages have continued for the last 2 years, but are utterly drowned out by the more acute problem which is the spread of covid and morbidity and mortality attached to it

Companies spend massive amounts on encouraging employees to exercise…. are you saying all companies have to do is explain exercise would reduce early mortality rates and then they can cut their fitness incentive spending while saving tons of money on health insurance?! That easy?!

CDC alone can't solve an issue that stems from high sugar food encouraged by the subsidies from the government.

Please note that I'm not knocking on subsidies as a concept but the sugar subsidies which enable the low cost diet in the US.

There are tons of federal fitness programs.

meanwhile I can't get my health insurance's 'health spending account' to pay for my gym membership...

On the contrary: there is plenty of money to be made selling supplements, it's super cheap to do, and in most jurisdictions the supplementation and natural products industry and market are barely regulated.

Sure you can jack up a $5 bottle to $15 perhaps, but that's nothing like the $100 a proprietary-pill-gravy-train that the big, rich corps are looking for. And million dollar campaigns are spent on.