Obesity reduction as a form of fighting coronavirus may not work due to the intense work and public participation required for it to work. Research, however, supports that obese people are more likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID.
Boris Johnson’s plan to fight coronavirus stems from his own experience when dealing with the virus earlier this year. After he was infected with the virus, Johnson stated that his condition turned ugly very fast and became life-threatening, leading him to get hospitalized. The Prime Minister narrated his experience and said it was a wake-up call to take the virus more seriously and reevaluate what needed to be done to fight the spread of the disease.
Throughout his career, the UK Prime Minister has been very vocal about people being able to choose what they eat, as evidenced in 2006 when he supported the mothers who were protesting new healthy foods that had been introduced in the country. He argued during that time that people need to have a choice on what they put in their bodies.
Obesity reduction plan
However, the tone now has changed, as he reflects on his own weight problem that exacerbates his situation leading to hospitalization. Now months after he was cleared free of coronavirus, he is speaking out on obesity reduction in the UK as a way of fighting severe effects of the COVID.
The data seemed to support Johnson about obesity leading to more hospitalization and deaths due to COVID. Global research involving 403,535 showed that people who were deemed as obese had higher chances of fatalities than their counterparts. They were also more likely to require hospitalization, respiratory support and become critically ill from the virus.
Obese people were also more likely to have comorbidities such as diabetes and heart disease, which also made them more susceptible to coronavirus, and also the virus becoming more severe for them.
The focus on obesity reduction by Boris Johnson’s administration may, however, not work based on past experience and experts opinion. Losing weight and staying on diets is a longterm endeavor that cannot be enforced in months. There is also the fact that people have to be willing to actively be engaged in the journey of losing weight for it to work.
Challenges of fighting COVID with weight loss
Paul Aveyard, professor of behavioral medicine at the University of Oxford, indicated that the government faced challenges from the type of foods that are advertised to the population, which mostly are unhealthy. He also highlighted that even if the adverts are banned on TVs, most businesses have already moved online and access to these products would still be easy.
Aveyard continued by explaining that even if the population started taking the measures Boris Johnson is explaining, they would not be able to achieve obesity reduction by winter. He also highlighted the fact that to lose a significant amount of weight takes years, not months and this posed a serious problem when considering obesity reduction for the short term in order to fight the coronavirus.
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