Because obesity will kill them. That's the message that's not being said in a COVID context. Healthy at every size is one of the biggest health lies in America
>Because obesity will kill them. That's the message that's not being said in a COVID context.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in America, and obesity is the #1 risk factor for it. This message has been clear and emphasized since the 1970s. Despite messaging, obesity has gotten worse, not better. You are wrong and oversimplifying the problem if you think COVID can be solved by telling people to lose weight.
It's really not an either-or situation. You can encourage people to be generally healthier, and also encourage them to get vaccinated (or force them).
And if you compare the two, the vaccine is much closer to a magic cure - it's very dependable and takes "1 month" to work (assuming a two shot vaccine). Whereas encouraging people to be less obese is both incredibly hard (as decades of campaigns prove), and even in the best case scenario, would take a long time for most people.
People should definitely be encouraged to get vaccinated too, I agree. But there should be no institutionalized discrimination against the unvaccinated, just as we shouldn't discriminate against the obese to encourage them to eat less.
This is a misleading interpretation of the data in Iceland. According to the parent link, 18 people are hospitalized there, compared to ~80,000 in the US. Adjusted for population, that is a >75% lower overall hospitalization rate. Infection rates in unvaccinated are also more than 2x vaccinated in Iceland. Unless you misinterpret the data, it is undeniable that vaccines reduce transmission and incidence of severe disease.
The higher rates of death and serious illness among the unvaccinated has nothing to do with what I was arguing. You are willfully misinterpreting my argument.
I was arguing that given Iceland, at almost full vaccination, is having its biggest COVID wave yet, means full vaccination does not provide herd immunity, and thus every one will eventually get exposed to COVID irrespective of the vaccination rate.
So you can't make a sound argument that other people's decision to get the vaccine is increasing other people's chance of being exposed to COVID.
The tweet you cite notes that only 18 people are hospitalized in Iceland. Adjusted for population, the US has over 4x as many hospitalizations. This is a huge success and 100% due to the high vaccination rates. Iceland was able to achieve this voluntarily. The US cannot.
That again has nothing to do with my argument, which is about the risk that being unvaccinated poses to others. If you are equally likely to be exposed to COVID if many are unvaccinated as if many are vaccinated, then you can't argue that other people deciding to not get vaccinated puts you at any additional risk.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in America, and obesity is the #1 risk factor for it. This message has been clear and emphasized since the 1970s. Despite messaging, obesity has gotten worse, not better. You are wrong and oversimplifying the problem if you think COVID can be solved by telling people to lose weight.