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Comment by deanjones | Hacker News Reader

Leaving aside all of the possible confounders for the difference in severity of Covid-19 infection in men and women, it's not the case that women on average have more body fat than men. So for a "healthy" man and a "healthy" woman, the woman would tend to have more fatty tissue, but more men are overweight. UK figures show that 40% of men are overweight, compared to 31% of women. In the US, 74% of men are overweight, compared to 67% of women.

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Those US figures are overweight or obese. The UK figures are likely overweight only. Over 60% of UK adults are overweight or obese [0]

[0] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...

The categories of overweight and obese are based on BMI, which is not relative proportion of body fat. On average, of a man and woman who both have a BMI of 30, the woman will have a higher proportion of body fat.

I think both these claims can be true at the same time, can’t they?

To make a toy example just to make the reasoning clear: if men’s BMI was distributed as 50% = 20, 50% = 35, and women’s BMI was distributed as 95% = 20, 5% = 35, the average body fat of all men would be higher than the average body fat of all women, even though the average body fat of women BMI=X would be higher than of men BMI=X for all X.

Do you have a link for those % stats? I'm not questioning the accuracy. Only that I want to share it with others (in a told ya so sorta way).

I misread the UK figures, the above are for overweight-but-not-obese. The overweight-and-obese split of men/women is 67%/61% (NHS, 2019): https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/sta...

US figures are here: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...

also, women tend to be smaller, so even with higher percentages, the total amount of fat can be roughly similar to men.

but it seems the real issue with fat is how much visceral fat there is vs. the total amount anyway. obese folks all tend to have much more visceral fat than relatively fit individuals. visceral fat interferes more with the workings of organs and the signaling mechanisms (hormones, neural pathways, lymph/blood compositions, etc.) that keep a body healthy.

Yes visceral fat appears to be the real risk factor.

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-880193/v1

My information was: 12% body fat is normal for a man and 24% is normal for a woman. Those deposits are needed since women bear children.

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