Re:Bacterial and fungal isolation from face masks under the ...
by remarkEon on Friday July 22, 2022 @12:20AM
(#32188490)
>According to this 73.6% of adults over 20 in the US are classified as overweight or obese
My God.
I did not think it was that high.
I had thought “ehh 50%” based simply on who I see walking around at Costco, and you’re right shame on me for not looking up the relevant statistics to fact check CNBC. That’s a legit public health catastrophe. We’re slow walking into a health case disaster if this doesn’t change.
Re:Bacterial and fungal isolation from face masks under the ...
by p1necone on Friday July 22, 2022 @01:13AM
(#32188765)
To be fair I think the threshold for 'overweight' is pretty low (and based on BMI which isn't a super great measure at least on an individual level), but yes it's definitely a problem.
Re:Bacterial and fungal isolation from face masks under the ...
by remarkEon on Friday July 22, 2022 @01:50PM
(#32194966)
Yeah BMI is a very crude metric. Half the guys I was in the Army with would be “overweight” if you only used BMI (these guys were not overweight, they were yoked).
Re:Bacterial and fungal isolation from face masks under the ...
by mgurlitz on Friday July 22, 2022 @02:15AM
(#32189088)
The "5.8% more likely" statistic would be in comparison to the population rate, not the subgroup who aren't overweight or obese. That group would have a 1-(1-.78)/(1-.736) or 16% reduction in hospitalization rate in comparison to the population, resulting in a relative increase of ~27% if you compare these two groups.
According to this 73.6% of adults over 20 in the US are classified as overweight or obese, so 78% of Covid hospitalizations being overweight or obese is not at all surprising.
This means that overweight and obese people are roughly 5.8% more likely to be hospitalized with Covid than people who are not overweight or obese. Hardly the slam dunk you're implying it is. (Of course I'm potentially making a mistake by excluding under 20s without knowing if the covid hospitalization statistic you're mentioning also excludes them, but taking that into account is too much research/math for today - what percentage of the US pop is < 20 years old?).
(As a side note, that article is awful (and I assume the source of your mistake) - it seems to imply that "obese" and "overweight or obese" are the same thing, except the former is 41.9% of the population and the latter is 73.6%. Not sure if intentional misuse of statistics, or just incompetence).