[DocSavage87]

Here's a new article in Science on the thread's topic:
Why obesity worsens COVID-19

The largest descriptive study yet of hospitalized U.S. COVID-19 patients, posted as a preprint last month by Genentech researchers, found that 77% of nearly 17,000 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were overweight (29%) or obese (48%).

The above sounds damning until you realize at least 64% (from 2000 survey) of the US population are overweight or obese.  Not sure what the most current numbers might be.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhanes/dat...weight.pdf

Yes, if they had said that 90% (fake number) of those hospitalized with COVID-19 are right handed, that wouldn't be enough info to mean much.

Regarding weight, NIH statistics shows the overweight (but not obese) percentage has been steady but the obese percentage has been climbing.  Still, in 2014, obesity was around 51% for women and 42% for men, so 48% in 2020 is more than obesity was in the general population of 2014, but not by a whole lot.

Remember, the hospitalized US COVID-19 patients constitute a different demographic than the US population.  Gender, age, and racial information could be used to try to clarify the risk ratio. 

Not the study you mentioned (which looked at hospitalization), but Genentech also funded a study that came out last month of Kaiser patients in SoCal.  It has a nice graphic of risk ratios of death for various conditions.  Note that overweight has less risk of death than normal weight.  Underweight has a pretty high risk.   BMI 30-35 (class 1 obesity) had a risk ratio of 1.26 (0.82-1.95); BMI 35-40: 1.16 (0.63-2.17); BMI 40-45: 2.68 (1.43-5.04); BMI 45+: 4.18 (2.12-8.26).

It also indicates that the chance of death has been going down over time.

So the two biggest risk factors aside from being an organ transplant is morbid obesity or advanced age?  That's surprising to me -- the relative risk of comorbidities vs just age.

[DocSavage87]

Here's a new article in Science on the thread's topic:
Why obesity worsens COVID-19

The largest descriptive study yet of hospitalized U.S. COVID-19 patients, posted as a preprint last month by Genentech researchers, found that 77% of nearly 17,000 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were overweight (29%) or obese (48%).

The above sounds damning until you realize at least 64% (from 2000 survey) of the US population are overweight or obese.  Not sure what the most current numbers might be.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhanes/dat...weight.pdf

Yes, if they had said that 90% (fake number) of those hospitalized with COVID-19 are right handed, that wouldn't be enough info to mean much.

Regarding weight, NIH statistics shows the overweight (but not obese) percentage has been steady but the obese percentage has been climbing.  Still, in 2014, obesity was around 51% for women and 42% for men, so 48% in 2020 is more than obesity was in the general population of 2014, but not by a whole lot.

Remember, the hospitalized US COVID-19 patients constitute a different demographic than the US population.  Gender, age, and racial information could be used to try to clarify the risk ratio. 

Not the study you mentioned (which looked at hospitalization), but Genentech also funded a study that came out last month of Kaiser patients in SoCal.  It has a nice graphic of risk ratios of death for various conditions.  Note that overweight has less risk of death than normal weight.  Underweight has a pretty high risk.   BMI 30-35 (class 1 obesity) had a risk ratio of 1.26 (0.82-1.95); BMI 35-40: 1.16 (0.63-2.17); BMI 40-45: 2.68 (1.43-5.04); BMI 45+: 4.18 (2.12-8.26).

It also indicates that the chance of death has been going down over time.

So the two biggest risk factors aside from being an organ transplant is morbid obesity or advanced age?  That's surprising to me -- the relative risk of comorbidities vs just age.