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Comment by anovikov | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it all outdated now? Obesity is a problem of the past, just get on Wegovy. It improves everything in life and there are no downsides.

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I know this is a joke, but you know what, it's actually kind of true now.

There are absolutely downsides to GLP1 drugs, but the way they work is well-studied, and with a low enough price and high enough availability (and a lot of luck to not have significant side effects), someone COULD get on them or some future better version of the drugs and have lowered/controlled appetite which enables them to lose weight over the long term.

Always taking the drug isn't ideal (and ideally you'd eventually get off), but it's better than the alternative.

Then again, I'm biased.

That was totally not a joke. I seriously think that public should revert to good old fat-shaming to coerce obese people to get on Wegovy (and yes, very obese ones will suffer side effects - how else do you expect to lose 20-25% of your body mass? naturally it has to be painful). Simply to reduce medical and social costs of obesity, these people need to be shamed into taking them. Obesity needs to be de-normalised socially so that people who are still obese, perceived as oddballs and finger-pointed at. Especially since in America, poor people are habitually shaming, and these days, when obesity is fixable with a guarantee by taking a $1300 drug, fat-shaming became poor-shaming.

As a matter of fact, if now in 2024 you are still obese, you are either poor, or you don't care.

Well, that's swung the other way very quick -- that's a pretty callous way to look at it IMO but to each their own.

Glad these drugs exist and are an option for people struggling with obesity though.

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