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Comment by _Understated_ | Hacker News Reader

We're talking about serious stuff: cancer, immune disorders, diabetes, obesity etc.

It is not a short list. Here is the list of high risk conditions for age 16-64 from my health department.

Cancer, Chronic kidney disease, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), Heart conditions, such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, or cardiomyopathies, Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) from solid organ transplant, Overweight (BMI > 25 kg/m2, but < 30 kg/m2), Obesity (body mass index [BMI] of 30 kg/m2 or higher but < 40 kg/m2), Severe Obesity (BMI ≥ 40 kg/m2), Pregnancy, Sickle cell disease, Down Syndrome, Smoking/Vaping (more than 20 days a month), Type 2 diabetes mellitus, Asthma (moderate-to-severe), Cerebrovascular disease (affects blood vessels and blood supply to the brain), Cystic fibrosis, Hypertension or high blood pressure, Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) from blood or bone marrow transplant, immune deficiencies, HIV, use of corticosteroids, or use of other immune weakening medicines, Neurologic conditions, such as dementia, Liver disease, Pulmonary fibrosis (having damaged or scarred lung tissues), Thalassemia (a type of blood disorder), Type 1 diabetes mellitus, Down Syndrome

Now, include the people who live with anyone with those conditions or the people who care or regularly interact with people with these conditions. We end up with a large percentage of the population. The proposal to lockdown/isolate only people with higher risk conditions is completely impractical.

High blood pressure is a serious underlying condition (and counted as an underlying condition in Covid death). Obesity is counted as an underlying condition at stage 1 (between 30 and 35 BMI).

Exactly. Obesity alone means ~40% of the population of the US, and ~30% of the UK have an underlying condition as far as COVID risk goes.

>Obesity alone means ~40% of the population of the US

And that is in large part thanks to the government and its public health experts, who we are now, I guess, supposed to believe have our interests in mind, even though, by letting 40% of the population become obese, when there are plain and simple steps they could have taken to prevent it, they have irrefutably demonstrated they do not actually care about the health of the population.

> letting 40% of the population become obese

"letting" seems like a strong verb. I'm all for empathy for those who struggle with maintaining a healthy weight—imagine being addicted to something that you must consume about 3 times a day to stay alive—but it seems a stretch to lay the blame of obesity on the feet of public health experts. Are they also responsible for alcoholics? Other drug addicts?

They could set one simple achievable goal which would drastically reduce obesity: every single high schooler graduates as an athletic machine. The government could do it easily. Schools already require students to participate in gym class, the problem is that it's an absolute joke. They could change that if they wanted. The health benefits are obvious. It's not like they don't know it's an option. They just make excuses for why they can't make any progress fighting obesity, probably because they don't want a healthy population.

Of course some in shape people will become fat as adults, but almost all fat adolescents stay fat until they die.

> obesity

That's >40% of US adults[1] and ~30% of UK adults[2] covered already.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

[2] https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/sta...

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