It hurts you.
Kaiser Permanente, a massive American HMO with 12.5 million members, treats patients for all illnesses and injuries across the full range of health care specialties. One of the effects of this medical integration is that Kaiser has a giant research population. They can test, track, and measure a whole lot of sick people.
During the pandemic, Kaiser used this broad access to a large client group to survey their COVID patients about the way they live and the way they’ve managed their health. One of the results is this study: “Physical inactivity is associated with a higher risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes: a study in 48,440 adult patients.”
Sample conclusion: “The odds of death were 2.49 times greater (95% CI 1.33 to 4.67) for patients who were consistently inactive compared with patients who were consistently meeting PA [physical activity] guidelines… Odds of death for consistently inactive patients was robust, and in most instances was higher than the odds of other COVID-19 risk factors.”
This finding tracks what a recent CDC-sponsored study has told us: 95% of patients hospitalized for severe illness from COVID-19 infection were morbidly obese, hypertensive, diabetic, or some combination of those conditions.
So: being fat and inactive makes you far more likely to get dangerously sick if you get the ‘rona, while being fit and active makes you far safer during the pandemic. Fitness is safety. Activity is safety.
Meanwhile, to protect us against serious illness during the pandemic, governments closed hiking trails, closed outdoor tennis courts, closed lap-swimming pools, closed playgrounds, closed gyms, and promoted the message, “Stay home, stay safe.”
In a moment when obesity and inactivity harmed people – in a moment when inactivity was extremely dangerous – government actively promoted physical inactivity, imposing strong barriers to exercise.
If you listened to government, you hurt yourself. Worse, if you listened to government, you hurt your children. As another recent Kaiser Permanente study concludes, “Overweight or obesity increased among 5- through 11-year-olds from 36.2% to 45.7% during the pandemic, an absolute increase of 8.7% and relative increase of 23.8% compared with the reference period. The absolute increase in overweight or obesity was 5.2% among 12- through 15-year-olds (relative increase, 13.4%) and 3.1% (relative increase, 8.3%) among 16- through 17-year-olds.”
Locked indoors, barred from schools and playgrounds, children got fatter; therefore, children became less healthy. Because of public health measures.
If you defied government – if you lifted the yellow DANGER tape around the playground so your child could play outdoors, if you went around the locked gate and hiked on the closed trail in the national forest, if you sneaked into the closed gym and risked a fine or an arrest – you were healthier, safer, and better equipped to survive the pandemic. Defiance was protective.
As the human centipede of our governing class and our expert classes becomes increasingly deranged by its commitment to ritual performance, this lesson will become more and more important.
Be prepared to protect yourself. Be prepared to refuse.
Read this story. Look at the picture of the way the children in this story are being forced to live. And don’t.