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Meanwhile, getting a COVID vaccine reduces the chance of death by >10x at a cost of <$40 per person. My impression is that vaccines are unusually cost-effective medicine and that the low-impact medical spending is elsewhere in the system, but it is nonetheless thought-provoking to consider this specific example.
I used to help out at a slimming group. Like many self-improvement quests, the effort waxes and wanes. Much as I wished for people to achieve their dream of being slimmer, and even though their wishes and often their attempts were laudable, I wouldn't call them "immense". They're people, most wanted an easy fix and struggled to remain dedicated when faced with the harder bits.
Our urges to eat and be lazy are also a consequence of our health and diet. They are not coming out of some pure rational willpower plane.
Yes, reading my comment again it doesn't seem I was saying that. Anyway, I don't think that much motivation is required, and if a diet / lifestyle change is hard to stick to, it's often because it's a misguided strategy. For illustration, counting calories while not making qualitative changes in the composition of the diet is just simply never going to work, long-term. Some foods are just too hyperpalatable, too prone to form emotional / addictive associations, but conversely that also implies those dietary changes will have to confront some emotional regulation issues as well. It sounds complicated, but I don't know, I think looking at how widespread the overweight issue is nowadays we have to conclude almost all of us are doing something wrong wrt to diet and lifestyle.
Calories in vs calories out. Simple as that.
Weight is a direct results of the calorie equation.
Appetite is regulated by a bunch of different factors. Actually, when you think about it, someone could live just fine being constantly hungry (so completely broken appetite signals) in a food scarce environment.
Vaccines are effective, they reduce death rate approximately 10 times. It still seemed quite high that several EU countries have reintroduced restrictions despite good vaccination uptake.
Besides this is about long-term issues, not just covid or something we can fix in 1 or 2 years.
If about 80% of the population took it, we wouldn't have any problem.
Of course previous health issues matter when you get sick and of course we should encourage healthier living, but we won't change this in the next 6 Months, for that we have a vaccine.
It would've probably been much much worse without the vaccines, but they are sadly not a miraculous cure that solves all problems.
Also my point is there is no use to any vaccine if underlying health is not addressed in tandem.
But that point was never in dispute, at least not in my comment.
Of course it would be great if the vaccine would also stop the transmission, but even if not, if less people get sick, less people will spread it, which will lead to smaller clusters.
It also allows the medical system to keep on working and providing the best medical help to people who do get sick.
Of course covid-19 is still an ongoing situation, viruses mutate, situations and recommendations change, but I don't see any indication that we can protect the population and even more the vulnerable population without a high enough vaccination rate.
Edit: Wording
Vaccines do _not_ work on their own. They work _with_ the immune system.
Therefore, if the immune system is compromised (for _any_ reason) vaccines are worthless.
There are risk factors, but don't start thinking you're invicible for not having them. The adaptive immune system is slow, vaccines prime it to react faster with more specific antibodies.
Dying of pneumonia does not feel good. It makes grown men cry and beg. Strongly recommend against.
Traditionnal post-downvote comment:
Covid affects those:
- on immunosuppressant medication most often for a PREVENTABLE "lifestyle" disease
- otherwise negatively affected by said disease, particularly in the vascular system, we know that Covid kills most those that have hypertension, long-term vascular damage from chronically-elevated blood sugar, etc.
- nutritional deficient / malnourished (low vitamin D, absence of sunlight, etc. etc.); this is also very common
And thus make up a sizeable amount of COVID patients. I see nothing noteworthy here. Having a preexisting condition makes you suffer more when you contract an infectious disease. I'd expect the same things you said could be repeated for influenza, pneumonia, or anything else. For that matter, how much worse do obese patients fare when recovering from a broken leg? Are fractures then a disease of the metabolically dysfunctional, as you put it?
And nothing is easy about a lifestyle intervention, it is in fact one of the hardest and least likely to hold kinds of medical treatment.
again, I'm not here to go on long arguments while being called a loon, which I'm bound to when touching this subject
sticking closer to home, tldr; I had MS, treated it with an elimination diet and other lifestyle changes, barring this intervention, I'd be on immunosuppressants
but I didn't intend to make this the larger part of my argument, as the main issue is with people facing blood sugar control problems brought on by "extremely western" (sugar|processed|junk)-food-laden diets