Public health already emphasizes reducing body fat to a significant degree for numerous other health reasons. Simply telling people to do so has proven fairly ineffective.
Possibility of dying blind, without feet because of diabetes wasn't good enough reason to lose fat for many. COVID-19 won't be either.
Losing weight is very difficult for people to sustain. There are individual success stories but those don’t outweigh the fact that, statistically, people just isn’t lose weight and keep it off sustainably.
1 kg of fat is roughly 7500 Cal. Healthy deficit is 500 Cal a day, which means losing 2 kg of fat per month. 50 kg overweight means two years of suffering.
Most fat people probably don't like hearing wealthy skinny politicians with personal chefs and trainers telling them to lose weight. Doesn't score well with the focus group I guess.
Obesity is not a motivation problem.
I would believe that covid has provided all sorts of opportunities for changes in habit, though, which might help.
I’m not too familiar with the added risk from being over weight, but as I understand it, it is no where near that big of a step change.
Either way, telling people to change their lifestyles falls on deaf ears as a group. People know, for example, that being obese in your 50s and 60s puts you at a great deal of risk, yet most people who are obese at the beginning of their 50s are still obese at the end of their 60s, provided that they are still alive.
We've already normalized instituting authoritarian measures over this pandemic. Given the Rubicon we've already crossed, there's absolutely no moral reason we shouldn't be firing everyone who doesn't reduce their BMI below threshold X by Y date and confining them to their homes.
Vaccines and masks don't protect just you but also those around you. Its simple and effective measures. That's the justification for mandates.
Fat kills you and you alone. The reasons are often complex and it requires long-term changes in private lifestyle and behavior to make any change.