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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

"Adiposity is the Crucial Enhancer of COVID-19" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7430889/

It has been disappointing to see how our public health officials have taken a defeatist approach by focusing almost entirely on infection control. While minimizing infections is an important aspect of pandemic management, many people are still going to get infected no matter what. So we should also take steps to reduce their risk of a bad outcome, including reducing excess body fat.

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Public health officials have tried to get people to lose weight for a while before the pandemic hit, and weren't wildly successful. Considering the difficulties in getting people to go along with very easy interventions, like wearing masks, what makes you expect that public health officials will somehow be more successful at convincing people to lose weight?

We don't have a scientifically proven method to greatly reduce body fat over the long term. (Yes, that includes calorie counting, keto, or whatever other fad diet.) Until we do there isn't much that officials and healthcare providers can to except give out diet and exercise advice that people won't follow.

It has been scientifically proven that consuming fewer calories than you expend over the long term will greatly reduce body fat.

One reason the COVID-19 death rate has been low in Japan despite having a high infection rate and a high proportion of elderly population is that they have very little obesity. I don't support the coercive legal measures they use under the 2008 ”Metabo Law". But strictly from a public health standpoint they have proven effective.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2009-11-10/fat-japan-youre-break...

And if you have a way to get people, on a mass scale, to stick to a reduced calorie diet long-term then you may have a scientifically proven solution. Until you have that you do not have a scientifically proven solution. You have a method of weight loss which only works as long as people stick to it (which scientific studies show they won't).

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