Fatphobia as standard right wing racism; or, there may be some gambling in Casablanca
By 
LGM commenter Karen regularly hunts for mangoes in the fetid bayous of the right wing Internet, and this morning she found a particularly over-ripe specimen at The Federalist:
Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman was caught in controversy early this month after the salad executive linked the severity of the coronavirus pandemic with high levels of obesity.
“[Seventy-eight percent] of hospitalizations due to COVID are Obese and Overweight people,” Neman wrote in an Aug. 31 deleted LinkedIn post citing March data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Is there an underlying problem that perhaps we have not given enough attention to? Is there another way to think about how we tackle ‘healthcare’ by addressing the root cause?”
While the root cause Newman indicted as the underlying culprit in the COVID crisis was obesity, Newman’s own diagnosis of the problem is fertilized by the proliferation of a cultural movement to both normalize obesity and demonize its opposition as “fat-phobic.” Newman himself became the latest target of the left’s nefarious feel-good crusade for daring to raise alarm over the nation’s ballooning crisis, while obesity triples [sic] an individual’s risk to hospitalization with COVID-19.
“This post is disgusting,” one LinkedIn user wrote back, according to Business Insider.
“Yikes, this is incredibly fat-phobic,” wrote another. “Have you considered how our healthcare system systematically underserves people who are considered to be in those groups?”
Has the race-obsessed left considered that its pro-fat movement systemically promotes obesity to the very people it claims to champion?
This screed goes on to quote a bunch of statistics about how Those People are a lot fatter than average typical normal ordinary — what word am I looking for here? — Americans, and that maybe it would be a good thing if somebody FINALLY informed America’s fat people, and most particularly it’s non-white fat people, that being fat is considered a bad thing by both the public health establishment and the broader culture.
The ruthless repression by The Left of this crucially important message explains why so many Americans, especially non-white Americans, are both fat and dying of COVID, since obviously they wouldn’t be fat or dying of COVID if the sweet evangel of thinness were ever preached to them by a culture that instead constantly celebrates fatness and stigmatizes a nice healthy thin weight.
Some numbers, all drawn from the very study referenced in the Federalist piece:
Risk of an overweight (BMI 25-29.9; this category includes 31% of American adults) person dying of COVID relative to someone who maintains an ideally thin weight (BMI 18.5-24.9): 5% lower.
Risk of someone with “Class I obesity” (BMI 30-34.9; this category includes the majority of Americans classified as “obese”) dying of COVID relative to an ideally thin person: 8% higher.
These two categories combined include the majority of American adults, and nearly three-quarters of all adults classified as being too fat by our public health authorities. This combined cohort DOES NOT have any statistically significant increased risk for either death or hospitalization because of COVID, relative to the “ideally thin.”
Risk of someone with Class II obesity (BMI 35-39.9) dying from COVID relative to ideally thin people: 14%
Risk of someone with Class III obesity (BMI 40-44.9; this is extremely fat, as you can see by playing around with this calculator if you’re so inclined) dying from COVID relative to ideally thin people: 33%.
Hmmm, now let’s see — to what can we compare these risk ratios , in order to gain a bit of perspective?
How about the risk of dying, period, i.e., not just from COVID, if you’re a Hispanic American, relative to the risk of dying from any cause if you’re a non-Hispanic white American? I mean Hispanic Americans are a lot fatter than non-Hispanic white Americans (the majority of Hispanic Americans are Mexican Americans, and for Mexican American women are 30% more likely to be “obese” than non-Hispanic white women), what with all that greasy Tex-Mex food imported from Chiapas etc., so we must be looking at some really scary numbers here.
Ah yes . . . found it.
Age-adjusted all-cause mortality, Hispanic or Latino: 524.8
Age-adjusted all-cause mortality, white not Hispanic or Latino: 748.3
So your annual risk of dying from whatever might kill you if you’re Really White is currently, on average, 43% higher than if you’re Hispanic/Latino. 43% is higher than 33%, and a whole lot higher than 14% and 8%, and really way way higher than -5%, so long story short, simply being Really White is worse for your health than being an extremely fat Latino, and WAY worse for your health than being a still way too fat I mean come on just look at those people Latino.* Which I’ll wager isn’t a stat you’re going to be seeing at The Federalist or for that matter anywhere other than here any time soon.
*People with a BMI of 45+ had a relative risk of dying from COVID that was 61% higher than that of “ideally thin” people, which is just a little bit worse than the mortality risk associated with being white rather than Latino.