Just realized that obesity is another area where liberals lie to you “for your own good.”

“It’s ok for a 10-year-old to weigh 300 pounds” is another bit of mendacity where they think they are protecting people but just harming them even worse in the long run. What’s odd is these same mooks will abuse others online when they see someone’s overweight cat (which everyone knows is very harmful to the cat), but then will not apply the same obvious conclusion to humans.

Another thought on obesity as it relates to medical care: the obese have better outcomes now than they formerly did because so much more care is thrown at them. Everyone in the medical field knows that obese people require vastly more treatment, and more drastic interventions earlier, to achieve the same results as those in the normal weight range. That is very hard to capture in the statistics, by the way, but it’s just generally true.

I shouldn’t have to point out (but knowing how poorly people read, I do) that this diverts resources away from normal-weight patients that they would otherwise receive.

COVID and the moral panic over obesity.

Wow, this is complete garbage. This is the real danger of smart people: they can lie to you so well that the average person cannot detect the deception.

This chucklefuck doesn’t really understand what the numbers they are citing mean nor what the statistical practices behind them are attempting to suss out. Combining cohorts in an unusual way? Check. Not understanding the difference between absolute risk and relative risk? Check. Not understanding that the “normal” weight group includes a lot of people who have dangerously and rapidly lost weight due to illness? Check.

This better portrays the reality of the situation.

Among 148,494 adults who received a COVID-19 diagnosis during an emergency department (ED) or inpatient visit at 238 U.S. hospitals during March–December 2020, 28.3% had overweight and 50.8% had obesity. Overweight and obesity were risk factors for invasive mechanical ventilation, and obesity was a risk factor for hospitalization and death, particularly among adults aged <65 years. Risks for hospitalization, ICU admission, and death were lowest among patients with BMIs of 24.2 kg/m2, 25.9 kg/m2, and 23.7 kg/m2, respectively, and then increased sharply with higher BMIs. Risk for invasive mechanical ventilation increased over the full range of BMIs, from 15 kg/m2 to 60 kg/m2.

What bothers me the most when people like this lie about obesity and its risks, they think they are helping their fellow fat people. But what they’re really doing is making it less likely they’ll be cared for correctly, less likely that real risks will be recognized and dealt with and worst of all, that children will be inflicted with obesity and have lifelong problems due to this severe abuse.

A better way to read this study than what this idiot clown does: Covid is not very high-risk if you are under 65 and normal-ish BMI, and a bit riskier if you are fat. But if you are over 65 and fat, the IFR goes way, way up.

That doesn’t mean obesity is great for Covid outcomes when you’re younger — it’s just that other risk factors swamp that one in the case of this disease.

Why, why, are so people invested in “proving” that being enormous is a-ok? Even if you don’t understand statistics and can’t read very well, at least have some fucking dignity and epistemological self-respect.

Are people really content being fat and unhealthy? Or is that something they tell themselves? A cope?

I can’t imagine actual happiness when waddling starts being involved. Maybe I just lack imagination. The only thing that should waddle is a duck.

Both the libs and conservatives are obsessed with masks, which work but are only mildly effective, when what both should be demanding is better ventilation.

Other than vaccination, this is by far the most effective anti-Covid measure. And its efficacy does not wane over time and it doesn’t matter who is vaccinated for it to function. Additionally, it helps prevent scads of other diseases.

That we didn’t go all out to achieve better ventilation is an indictment of our entire society. We leave easy victories on the table while we battle over trifles. China is going to grind us into dust.

The people angry that the world is re-opening and things are getting back to normal in more places are hard to explain. They’re very special. Lockdown lifers remind me of those people who get upset when anyone has any fun. Hell, they are those people.

Their tears sustain me.

Damn. I need to watch her more. She’d be frustrating to play. Fun to watch, though.

The Differences Between the Moderna and Pfizer Vaccines Are Starting to Matter.

That’s the reason I wanted (and got) the Moderna vaccine. I knew it’d be more effective. Those virology textbooks paid off. They aren’t really the same vaxes, and not just because of dosage.

See here for more info.

Everyone claims that the Moderna and the Pfizer have the same coding. But they do not. The proof is above.

Kind of bizarre to think Elon Musk is a “fraud” at this point. An increasing number of Musk projects are proving themselves to be very real and very transformative. https://t.co/k2Yh6jG3s9

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) September 20, 2021

It is weird. Yeah, some of the stuff he does and his companies do is complete BS. But here’s something to think about: that’s true of anyone who has done anything major and worthwhile.

Really, liberals are mostly angry at Musk because his companies do big, hard things in the physical world, which they see as déclassé and dishonorable. Most of them are highly concerned with using the right words in the proper places and thus anyone who builds a big fucking rocket and does cool, useful shit with it is seen as no better than the (from their view) nasty, uneducated auto mechanic who works on their car.

The same for anyone who builds up an actual car company. Musk has done both.

It’s time to depose the word-slingers and let the builders and makers take over. Hopefully, though, we could do it with more government works and less Musk. He is not ideal, I’ll admit. But his actual faults are not why most liberals despise him, unfortunately. The antipathy truly does emerge from the fact that he does world-expanding hard shit that changes the shape of human possibility. And for that, in their minds, he must be destroyed.