Welcome to Debate Club! Please be aware that this is a space for respectful debate, and that your ideas will be challenged here. Please remember to critique the argument, not the author.

Thoughts on the “glamourizing/normalizing” obesity vs body positivity conversations

Options
189111314

Replies

  • Speakeasy76
    Speakeasy76 Posts: 961 Member
    People also need to realize that the social distancing, lockdown, masking measures are not just to reduce the number of deaths. It's to reduce the strain on the healthcare system. Our hospital system wasn't (and sill isn't) prepared to deal with a pandemic on this level.

    I'd also like to point out that this disease isn't just riskier to obese people, but other onderlhing conditions not related to obesity as well. Research is stating that low vitamin d levels are also a risk. Should we condone people who don't get outside enough, have darker skin tones or live in places with cold weather? After all, shouldn't we all know what to do to get more vitamin D?
  • Speakeasy76
    Speakeasy76 Posts: 961 Member
    edited January 2021
    People also need to realize that the social distancing, lockdown, masking measures are not just to reduce the number of deaths. It's to reduce the strain on the healthcare system. Our hospital system wasn't (and sill isn't) prepared to deal with a pandemic on this level.

    Yes and the argument for reducing obesity levels is that it's another way to reduce the strain on the healthcare system and could reduce the need for social distancing and lockdowns, as well as reaping additional long-term health benefits. Maybe the healthcare system wouldn't be strained now, or would be less strained now, if people had addressed their lifestyle-related preventable illnesses earlier in the year.
    I'd also like to point out that this disease isn't just riskier to obese people, but other onderlhing conditions not related to obesity as well. Research is stating that low vitamin d levels are also a risk. Should we condone people who don't get outside enough, have darker skin tones or live in places with cold weather? After all, shouldn't we all know what to do to get more vitamin D?

    No, that's a false comparison. First of all, low vitamin D isn't listed on the official list of COVID-19 risk factors (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html) whereas obesity and obesity-related diseases are. I'm not saying low vitamin D doesn't play a role, but the evidence must not be as clear-cut as it is for obesity, and if you're just going by official public health sources (which we've been told is what we should listen to), you're not going to know about it.

    Also, it's easy to tell if you're overweight or obese. You don't even necessarily have to get on a scale to figure it out. Whereas you can only tell if you have low vitamin D from a blood test, so a lot of people don't know they have it. And obviously when all non-COVID healthcare is shut down for months, nobody can go to the doctor for a routine checkup.

    Also, doctors haven't taken low vitamin D seriously in the past. A couple of years ago, my doctor told me that doctors were advised to not even check vitamin D levels on a blood test anymore, because low vitamin D levels are so commonplace and aren't considered to be a serious health problem anymore. Doctors also tell people that the risk of low vitamin D is less bad than the risk of skin cancer from not wearing sunscreen, but they also don't tell people to supplement with vitamin D unless their blood test comes back with low vitamin D.

    Now, unfortunately, as we know from this discussion, some doctors have the same approach to obesity, but it's still more generally accepted that obesity shortens lifespan and leads to health consequences. Whereas the average person doesn't really know what the consequences of low vitamin D are. Certainly, it's not common knowledge (and especially wasn't before this year) that low vitamin D can increase the risk of dying from respiratory illness. Whereas it is common knowledge that obesity affects the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems.

    Lastly, are you trying to insinuate that certain people in this discussion are racist or something ("have darker skin tones")? Because that is really unfair.

    Whoa, what? "Trying to insinuate that certain people in this discussion are racist or something?" What I meant is that it is pretty well-documented that pigment in darker skin can block sun absorption, thereby reducing the body's ability to convert it to vitamin D.

    I was not realistically comparing having low vitamin D to obesity as risk factors for COVID. In actuality, low vitamin D would be much easier to treat than obesity, because I think being obese and the solutions to it are multi-faceted for many people (not just that they are "uninformed," "lazy, or "lack willpower"_ and just need to "eat less and move more"-not my thoughts). And you are absolutely correct in that people know they are obese, and most likely already know that it's a risk factor for COVID complications. I know the people I know that are obese do.

    For some people, knowing this has been enough for them to make changes so they are able to lose weight. For many others, it hasn't. I don't fault them for not doing so or question why they can't or haven't done so yet. I guess I've become (or tried to become) more of the mindset that I can't control the actions of others, even if I'd like to or think it's for the common good (even though I'd like to, esp. with what happened in the US yesterday). I think that if for most people knowing that obesity is a risk factor for many diseases and complications isn't motivating enough to get someone to change, knowing that it also could be somehow contributing to the healthcare crisis created by COVID wouldn't be either.

    I do know that obesity in and of itself (even outside of COVID) can increase the strain on the healthcare system, yet I feel it's a little late at this point to negate its affects when it comes to COVID. Could it make a small dent if right now everyone decided to lose weight? Maybe. But how would that work outside of people deciding to make the changes themselves? Even so, losing weight healthily can take awhile. Should the government get involved somehow? How would that even work?




  • siberiantarragon
    siberiantarragon Posts: 265 Member
    edited January 2021
    I noticed you never bothered to actually reply to the point above of Canada vs US, you resorted to the UK and France as counterexample (quite wrong - see below) without discussing the merits of the point.

    I have a lot more thoughts on the matter, but I reduced it down to the most important couple of sentences because this thread isn't the place for general pandemic discussion.

    However, I will say that you're uninformed on the UK and France. The UK had a lockdown for months where you're only allowed to associate with one other family, and celebrating the holidays was banned. Now it's even stricter than that. These are their current rules and they've had rules as restrictive as this on and off since the beginning depending on case numbers (https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-52530518) They even have rules restricting what you can buy in stores as "essential" vs. "non-essential." The police are also strongly enforcing lockdowns with jail time. Schools are also not open.

    France had lockdowns where outdoor exercise was banned in some areas, the punishment being a six-month jail sentence! (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11345945/coronavirus-paris-ban-outdoor-exercise-jail-france/) To say that is comparable to the measures in any part of the US is simply false.

    I have a friend who lives in Canada and her area was, at its peak, equally restricted as mine was, and hers opened up earlier. By fall, shopping malls, restaurants, schools, etc. were open and small indoor gatherings were allowed. So to say that Canada had some kind of insane lockdown compared to the US is simply untrue.

    Getting back to obesity, Canada has a 25% obesity rate according to this article from August of this year (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53656651) vs. 42% for the US. So it absolutely could play a role in lower death rates. (BTW, if you want to see an example of obesity being normalized by doctors, check out that article!)

    Again though if you want to discuss this further (and I could discuss this all day), we should do it in another thread or over PM, because this thread is about the normalization of obesity in modern culture and its effects.

This discussion has been closed.