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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

A comparison should also be made between obesity rates in Europe vs the US, with the US at a strong disadvantage (because obesity has a strong correlation with higher Covid deaths).

The same thing can be said about diabetes, I suspect the US had a higher percentage of persons affected by diabetes compared to Europe. IMHO diabetes is also a strong differentiator between South America and Africa in terms of deaths, I think that higher diabetes incidence in South America was partly to blame for a higher rate of Covid deaths when comparing it to Africa.

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Vietnam has the lowest obesity rate in the world. Guess how well they've managed to avoid major damage from the virus...

Insinuating that there might something like personal responsibility affecting disease outcome is dangerous business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBJpYIfDF3A

Mere mention of a fact like obesity differences in population doesn't imply personal responsibility. US has a market, culture, and educational system that's as much to blame as individual choices.

Aside from even examining any of that - it's clear you have a personal bias that makes you want to impute "the US market, culture, and educational system."

How convenient that a disease comes along that magically confirms all your priors about the wickedness of American institutions and culture!

Must we descend into ad hominem attacks?

Let's call a spade a spade: - market manipulation [0][1] - culture [2] - education [3]

0. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...

1. https://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food

2. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-su...

3. https://www.healthyway.com/content/how-did-the-government-ge...

> Mere mention of a fact like obesity differences in population doesn't imply personal responsibility.

If there is no personal responsibility whatsoever in obesity, then this statement is true.

> US has a market, culture, and educational system that's as much to blame as individual choices.

If this statement is true, then there is still some personal responsibility in obesity.

Both statements can not be true at the same time. Also, culture and education doesn't absolve anyone from personal responsibility.

I'm not saying there is no personal responsibility. That's why I wrote "...as much as...".

That said, a case could be made that poorly educated consumers, born to a calorie optimized tribe (say islanders), in a market flooded with industrialized food and deceptive marketing would have little hope of avoiding obesity.

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