yeah, believe it or not, mask compliance is essentially universal here and has been for a year. It's just become part of the culture.
The Washington Post has a story today about the link between being overweight or obese and bad outcomes from covid, based on a report from the World Obesity Federation [who knew there was one): https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...global-report/
“The report, by the World Obesity Federation, found that 88 percent of deaths due to covid-19 in the first year of the pandemic were in countries where more than half of the population is classified as overweight, which it defines as having a body mass index (BMI) above 25. Obesity, generally defined as BMI above 30, is associated with particularly severe outcomes.”
Obesity/lousy COVID outcomes seem pretty clearly linked, but the framing of this article--"countries where" is...odd.
Obesity isn't exclusively a rich country problem, but rich countries are where a great deal of the world's obesity is. It is in these countries, America and Britain most of all, where everyday diet as an addiction model has been pursued by industry most expansively. Processed food and drink have been purposely engineered to be addictive. America has exported processed food/sugar/refined flour addiction to middle-income places that used to see very little of that, like Mexico and Brasil.
Too, widespread early transmition of COVID, before the medical establishment got on top of treatement, seemed to be predominantly an epiphenomenon of air travel. That's also, not exclusively but mostly, a rich-world game.
And third, age is even more tied to bad COVID outcomes than obesity, right? And it's these rich countries that went through the demographic transition first, and so have way more old people than most middle income countries and all low income countries.
So the framing seems odd to me. It seems to be putting this additional level between obesity and COVID. It's like, of course there are lot of obese people in the countries where there were a lot of deaths, because most obese people live in the countries that have a lot of money (as a whole), frequent flier miles, and seniors.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Kyle gets BUCKETS!
https://youtu.be/NJWPASQZqLc
So, was at the bagel place this morning up here in NJ, and as seems to happen, a guy walks in with his mask down under his nose.
Like... wtf? At this point, if you are STILL wearing it wrong, it is basically a big "screw you" to everyone around you. Always seems to be a guy. How are people still doing this?
yes, it's annoying. Having said that, I have to admit that yesterday I was in Costco during geezer hours, and I suddenly found my schnoz exposed, because (I determined) the elastic on my ear loops is starting to loosen up...so I subbed a mask off the bench and retired the old mask...
This is where N95s help. The elastic goes fully around your head which is much more reliable seal compared to ear loops. With that said, I can't speak to longevity of the elastic. Obviously, guidance is for single use but that guidance is also shaded by a recommender who benefits from that replacement cycle.
Preach! Every time I look at the BMI chart I’m confused. It suggests I need to to lose 30-50 pounds to be in my healthy range. This would put me back in the horribly awkward spindly weight of me as a 9th grader after I grew 7 inches in 4 months. I’d look like a skeleton person.
Close! (That was my second thought.)
First thought - was this analysis age-adjusted? Answer: NO!!!!!! The "magic" numbers in BMI of 25 for overweight and 30 for obese were largely decided based on the proportions of . . . yes, you guessed it, white men. Granted, as a measure, it was only ever intended to be used at the population level, calculating a BMI for an individual in order to tell them they are overweight or obese is not the measure's intended use. Yes, this report did use population level BMI, but if you don't adjust for age in an analysis of covid 19 mortality at this point, I'm not going to cut you any slack. Also - did the report consider a country's pandemic response or healthcare systems or any economic factors? No, they did not.
A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
---Roger Ebert
Some questions cannot be answered
Who’s gonna bury who
We need a love like Johnny, Johnny and June
---Over the Rhine
I'm sure by now you have all also heard about the newly raised objections by some religions and religious spokespeople about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine because the adenovirus vector is grown in a cell line derived from an aborted fetus. (Of note, both Pfizer and Moderna also used the same cell line in some of their pre-clinical studies, but for some reason they don't have a problem with that?)
Anyway, there seems to be a lot of misinformation out there, and this is likely not the forum that really needs this tiny bit of education, but just so I can feel like I didn't ignore what is becoming (apparently) a really important point about covid vaccines right now, I'll press on briefly.
Cell lines are cells that grow very well outside the body and are used for medical research, medical diagnostics, and pharmaceutical product development (and probably for other things that I don't really know much about). They grow fairly rapidly and are continuously fed, maintained, and "split" so that they can continue to grow and be useful. Viruses cannot grow outside of cells, so cell lines are necessary for growing viruses. Since the J&J vaccine uses an adenovirus vector, it has to be grown. It so happens that this particular fetal cell line grows the virus efficiently.
The cells were derived from an aborted fetus back in 1985 and the cells have been propagated ever since. They have also been used (and are still being used) in the development of other vaccines, including hepatitis A and varicella zoster vaccine, among others.
Here's my take on this situation. The fetus was not aborted to get his/her cells. The fetus was aborted because its mother wanted an abortion. I get that some people see abortion as completely abhorrent and think that the mother in question should never have aborted her son. I understand that. But we can't go back in time and make the abortion not happen. Had the cells not been derived from the aborted fetus, the fetus would just have been thrown into an incinerator and burned. Instead, that aborted fetus has prevented human suffering and disease for decades.
So do the opponents of abortion really think it would be better if the fetus had just been thrown away? I would understand their objection if the fetus had been sacrificed for the sole purpose of obtaining these cells to make this cell line, but that is not what happened. And we can't go back in time and have the baby not be aborted. So our choices are i) he/she gets aborted and gets thrown away and incinerated, or ii) he/she is aborted, but we harvest a few cells and turn them into a continuous cell line that has a myriad of uses, most of which have alleviated or prevented human suffering and death. Given those choices, can they really prefer choice number 1?
Oh, and if they are that opposed to the use of the fetus-derived cells, why are they not also opposed to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines? I guess using the fetus-derived cell line "a little bit" is ok, but using the same cell line "a lot" is not ok? To me the whole thing is mind-boggling.
Finally, to be clear, there are none of these cells in the vaccine itself. It is just used to produce the virus.
To their credit, though, and for completeness's sake, the Vatican has said that if you don't have a choice as to what vaccine you are going to get, it is ok to get the J&J vaccine. Also, Holy Cross has agreed to get J&J vaccine distributed and administer it.
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
I know I am going to feel dumb/ignorant for asking this... but I'm asking anyway.
So, my wife's arm was really sore and she got a red rash (called "Moderna arm") a few days after shot #1. She had a little bit of a headache too.
My arm was a little sore the night after and the next day, nothing too bad... but I have not really had any bad symptoms. Does this mean my immune system isn't working as hard on fighting this? Or are the bad after effects that indicate a robust immune response mostly after shot #2?
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?