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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

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StavrosK

That's interesting, why is that?

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Higher obesity in US maybe?

I doubt the entire US became sharply more obese in the past year, though, so much so that it also died from it.

the US was already more obese than Germany -- and obesity seems to correlate with higher covid-19 mortality

But the pandemic could have hit the more obese American population harder.

I'm assuming tokai is saying that because obese people are more likely to have complications from Covid19, the US saw a higher increase in excess deaths, given that the obesity rate is higher than eg Germany.

Oh, I see, I thought they meant that the excess deaths were caused by obesity, not by COVID19 leading to higher rates of death among the obese. That makes more sense.

This also explains some of the racial disparities in COVID deaths since the obesity rate for blacks is 49.6% vs 44.8% for Hispanics, 42.2% for whites, and 17.4% for Asians

The suggestion wasn't that they were dying from obesity, but from its correlation with covid. Not sure if it can account for the increase, but in conjunction with pretty terrible handling of the crisis during 2020 I could imagine it at least.

That makes sense, I misunderstood, thanks.

Probably a combination of:

- US letting it rip through vulnerable populations with the promise of "herd immunity" being right around the corner

- Fewer hospital beds available in less populous areas.

- Taking COVID seriously became a culture war issue. So while some countries might've had its youth catch it while mostly keeping it away from older populous, the US had the opposite: less vulnerable youth took it relatively seriously, with lots of 60+ flaunting safety measures they felt were oppressive

How does that explain Sweden? Or Germany. Or any of of the stats the person above you was replying to.

I'm not sure it's really a good comparison to pick a subset of European countries and compare them to the whole US. Some countries seem to have handled it better than others, which we could definitely learn from, but I don't think it is a US vs Europe problem like some other commenters seem to be implying. We could also compare Italy, Belgium, Hungary to Vermont.

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