Awareness Month — More Books

Always the Fat Kid, subtitled “The Truth About the Enduring Effects of Childhood Obesity,” was written by authors who see the condition as stemming from poor lifestyle choices. Jacob Warren and K. Bryant Smalley are co-directors of the Rural Health Research Institute, which resides at Georgia Southern University. The publisher describes the message as “urgent, timely, and authoritative,” adding:

Theirs is a clarion call for parents to have “the talk” with their kids, which medical professionals say is a harder topic to address than sex or drugs.

The same thought is expressed in a different way by Kirkus Reviews:

They also argue that parents are unwilling to speak honestly to their children about weight and that even doctors are instructed to avoid the topic out of fear of insulting or upsetting children.

The authors have identified “The Fat Kid Syndrome,” a synthesis of physical and psychological problems. Some of the indicators are diabetes, high blood pressure, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and compulsive behaviors. Such children feel the effects of being seen as “other” and “less than.”

The authors aim to raise awareness about the current and future consequences of letting this state of affairs continue, so the work fits right in with Childhood Obesity Awareness Month (yes, every September!)

On the practical side, there are pointers to useful information about programs designed for children, including nutrition, fitness, and weight management. The Kirkus Reviews caveat paragraph says,

[E]ven the authors acknowledge that there hasn’t been enough time to research the long-term effects of the current epidemic. Therefore, much of what Smalley and Warren write about is speculation. They also come dangerously close to overgeneralizing the experience of obesity; certainly not all “fat kids” will suffer the extremes they describe.

A flawed but useful call to arms in the fight against childhood obesity.

Written and illustrated by Jesse Levison, this work is described as “a ‘corny’ book full of food puns that express a parent’s love for their baby.” Some call it hilarious; others question one or more of the premises behind it. One person at Childhood Obesity News feels that it might send dangerous messages to parents, caregivers, and kids. Also, not all children love flippant nonsense. Some struggle to make sense out of the world and are confused by puns and wordplay, at least for the time being. They don’t want cleverness; they want reliable information with which to orient and steady themselves.

The promotional copy seems to suggest that the book will be read to an “adorable, chubby baby,” and that the food puns will “tell a baby just how much they are treasured.” That does seem like a bit of a stretch. (What the baby certainly will love is the parental presence and attention.) A slightly older child might not enjoy being reminded of their recent, undignified infantile status. It would be interesting to see how this idea plays out in the real world; how different kids react.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Always the Fat Kid,” MacMillan.com, undated
Source: “Always the Fat Kid,” KirkusReviews.com, March 2013
Source: “I Could Eat You Up,” PowerhouseCultural.com, April 2021
Image by Liz Henry/CC BY-ND 2.0

Awareness Month — Settle in for a Read

September is Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, and around here, so are all the other months. In a search for enlightenment, these are comments on written works having to do with the plight of overweight and obese young people.

Teenage Waistland is a nonfiction book, which author Abby Ellin also dubs “Fat Camp Confidential.” In addition to weight loss camps, she explores “boarding schools, weight-loss programs, parent workshops, support groups, and surgical procedures.”

The most attractive part of Ellin’s description of her book is the section about explaining to parents how they can — or cannot — help their children grapple with various issues. She speaks from the stark experience of “her own adolescent struggle with food and weight, and journeys with hope, skepticism, and humor through the landscape of today’s diet culture.” She also interviewed a number of morbidly obese adolescents. Some of the questions that need to be asked are,

What can parents say that kids will hear?
Why don’t kids exercise more and eat less when they’re dying to be thinner?
What treatment methods actually work? Willpower, or surrender? Shame, or inspiration?

At the same time, there is an awareness that “one size does not fit all” and each troubled teen will ultimately need to find his or her own answers. The website also includes a lengthy excerpt from the book.

An uncredited PublishersWeekly.com critic wrote,

The problem with this book may be that it’s a little too honest… Yet the author’s compassion and her willingness to share her personal life, along with the book’s appendix listing helpful resources, may bring comfort to many distraught parents.

Fat Dad, Fat Kid

Shay Butler, on the verge of his 30th birthday, weighed nearly 300 pounds. Unwilling to risk the possibility that his five children might grow up as partial orphans, he decided on a program of incremental habit changes. A Goodreads.com review says, “Adopting the attitude that every action, no matter how small, was better than what he was doing before, Shay lost more than 100 pounds.” He also invited his oldest son Gavin to join in, and this is the book they wrote about their experience. Bottom line: “Maintaining” is the hard part.

For more reading material about reading material, we recommend these archived posts:

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Teenage Waistland,” AbbyEllin.com, undated
Source: “Teenage Waistland: a Former Fat Kid Weighs In on Living Large, Losing Weight, and How Parents Can (and Can’t) Help,” PublishersWeekly.com, undated
Source: “Fat Dad, Fat Kid: One Father and Son’s Journey to Take Power Away from the “F-Word,” Goodreads.com, undated
Image by April Hansen/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Risk and Resistance in Minority Communities

The mutual worsening effect of obesity and the virus has been discussed many times in this blog, and their combined influence is only growing worse. Extra body weight is catnip to the virus, and the debilities caused by the illness, in either caregivers or children, are likely to contribute even more significantly to obesogenic life situations and a lack of resources that was already severe in the pre-COVID days.

Last year at this time, Latinos in high-risk states were “1.3 to 1.6 times more likely to be infected than their proportion of the population would suggest.” For a study, hospitalization records were collected from 14 states. In the fall of 2020, out of every three children admitted with COVID-19, one was in the ICU. Also,

Of the 526 children for whom race and ethnicity information were reported, 45.8% were Hispanic, 29.7% were Black, and 14.1% were White.

In September, a CDC study of 391,814 cases among people under age 21 found that some ethnic groups included a disproportionate number of essential workers unable to shelter in place or work from home. The problem there includes the possibility of secondary transmission to other household members, including, of course, young adults, teens, children, and infants, all of whose numbers were heading inexorably in an upward direction.

Among the subjects, 121 had died. Journalist Alexandra Sifferlin wrote,

Even though Hispanic, Black, and American Indian/Alaskan Native people account for 41% of the American population under age 21, these three groups accounted for about 75% of deaths from Covid-19 in this age group.

As recently as this June, Salud-America.org noted, “Unfortunately, Latinos make up a very low percentage of those getting a vaccine, despite being disproportionately hurt by COVID-19.”

Extrinsic and intrinsic factors

Why the disappointing turnout for vaccination? One drawback has been a lack of access. Despite being accurately described as “essential workers,” and even though they might work directly with patients and technically be part of health care, service workers were not given the highest priority in eligibility to receive the vaccine. In many places, such employees tend to be Latino and Black.

Even for the eligible, certain areas tend for some reason to offer relatively few vaccination sites. Of the county that includes Boston, Julia Weis wrote:

Fewer than 14 percent of Black residents and roughly 26 percent of Latinos live in census tracts that are within 1 mile of a vaccination site, compared with nearly 46 percent of white residents. With fewer vaccination sites in hard-hit areas, residents are expected to travel across the city to receive a vaccine — an often unrealistic ask for those who can’t afford transportation costs or are unable to take time off from work.

There is also the matter of limited internet access, which impedes the search for vaccination sites and the ability to schedule appointments. James Rudyk, executive director of the Northwest Side Housing Center in Chicago, said,

Our folks don’t have emails, they don’t have computers at home… They have smartphones, but they are not navigating registration systems that want you to fill out pages and pages of information.

This combines with a general lack of bilingual information. Outreach workers have reported that some of their contacts didn’t even know there was a vaccine. What has been termed “vaccine resistance” or “lack of vaccine confidence” has both rational and emotional elements. Minority Americans are on some level aware that their communities have been psychologically manipulated by advertising and by targeted misinformation about other matters. Many have faced bias and discrimination from the medical sector, whether because of their obesity or their race, or a combination.

Very recently, a corner seems to have been turned, and grassroots vaccination efforts are paying off. According to Centers for Disease Control number-crunching, writes Nada Hassanein,

Over the past two weeks, people of color have been vaccinated with a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine more than white people when compared to their shares of the population… While Hispanic and Latino people make up 17% of the nation’s population, they totaled more than a quarter of those who initiated vaccination in the past two weeks.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “A Second Coronavirus Death Surge Is Coming,” TheAtlantic.com, 07/15/20
Source: “COVID-19 Hospitalization Data From 14 States: 1 in 3 Youths Admitted to ICU,” InfectiousDiseaseAdvisor.com, 09/08/20
Source: “Black, Hispanic, and American Indian Children Make Up Most Covid-19 Deaths Among Kids,” Medium.com, 09/18/20
Source: “Latinos Vaccinated for COVID-19 at Far Lower Rates than White People,” Salud-America.org, 06/01/21
Source: “Amid climbing COVID cases and community efforts, racial disparity in vaccinations appears to be narrowing,” USAToday.com, 08/05/21
Image by Sue Thompson/CC BY-ND 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — For Minorities, a Bleak Picture

Bleak Landscape

Once the pandemic had worked up a full head of steam, it was not long before trite reality showed up in familiar ways. Add up every factor that negatively affects minority communities in “normal” times — economic disadvantage, single parenting, overcrowded living spaces, terrible working conditions, food deserts, and many more.

All have been worsened, and the people who suffer the most are the essential workers, who just can’t catch a break. And as we have seen, many of the disruptions caused by the pandemic also happen to be “obesity villains​,” in other words, events, experiences, or conditions that bear some responsibility for the ever-worsening obesity epidemic.

A bad precedent

Ever since the word “coronavirus” was first heard, the public has been told that handwashing is a vital component in the wall of protection we hope to build around ourselves. For a really extreme example of how health inequities can cause havoc, Childhood Obesity News looked at the Navajo Nation.

We’re talking about a giant piece of land with only 175,000 residents, with a housing shortage and several generations crowded into small living spaces, and yet with vast distances between them. COVID-19 snuck in and had itself a good old time. In April of 2020, Debra Utacia Krol wrote for AZCentral.com, “As a percentage of the population, the nation’s infection rate is nearly 10 times that of Arizona’s.”

Nobody even has an accurate picture of how bad the situation is:

At least 15% of Navajo Nation homes have no running water at all… The real number may be 40% to 50%.

It is not only water, Krol reported, that there isn’t enough of. A frequent lack of sewers, electricity and internet all contribute to the detriment of public health. Most urban minority neighborhoods are not quite so disadvantaged, but conditions can be pretty rough.​

One of these things is not like the other

It quickly became obvious that non-white ethnic groups were having a rougher time of it, and they still are. A year ago, this was especially true of children, and it still is.

News began to circulate concerning the horrendous complications that the very young can develop — even after they seem to have recovered from the disease. This is “long COVID,” but there is speculation that the virus might also somehow be responsible for Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children ​(MIS-C), or even that they might be the same disorder.

MIS-C is statistically rare, but terrible when it strikes, and we have no guarantee that it will not find a way to become King of Diseases by this time next year. We are in uncharted territory, and so far, it doesn’t look good. Pediatrician Bo Stapler, M.D., speaks of two studies published by the New England Journal of Medicine:

According to the U.S. study, the average age of children with MIS-C was eight, and 62% were male. Both NEJM investigations found minorities to be disproportionately affected. The authors write, “The percentage of patients in our series who were Black or Hispanic was also higher than in the U.S. population overall.”

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Navajo Nation’s water shortage may be supporting COVID-19 spread,” AZCentral.com, 04/28/20
Source: “The Latest on the Mysterious Inflammatory Syndrome in Children,” Medium.com, 07/07/20
Image by David Evers/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Artivism Versus COVID-19

El-Delta-COVID-19
The COVIDLatino.org project brings together a collective of academic institutions, community-based organizations, researchers, advocates, and artists to create culturally-tailored and empirically-based COVID-19 information that is relevant and timely.

Its website provides several informational videos, and pointers to a multitude of other resources. Journalist Cynthia Silva wrote,

The campaign was spearheaded by Gilberto Lopez, an assistant professor at Arizona State University School of Transborder Studies… The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately hit Latinos in the country, who have accounted for nearly 30 percent of the Covid cases and nearly 20 percent of deaths.

Another of the many activists connected with the project, creating culturally relevant art, is Lalo Alcaraz, who has twice been a Pulitzer finalist in the editorial cartoon category. A tribute to his creativity ​appeared in the academic journal Prose Studies, where Jessica Rutherford said,

Because of the social artivism in which this work engages, it serves as a powerful shaping device, helping followers to process and cope with difficult realities.

Among other topics, Alcaraz addresses how vaccine hesitancy worsens the medical crisis. There are myths that need debunking, and for that chore, no one is more qualified than a humorist. He told remezcla.com, in all seriousness,

I wish I could talk to every one of those Latinos who are still hesitant about getting the vaccine. We’re trying to combat that attitude some people have where they’re like, “I’m strong, so I don’t need it.”

The impetus behind vaccine resistance is both emotional and rational. This is not to imply that most, or even many, people in a given population live in fear of the law. But as journalist Nada Hassanein phrased it in USA Today:

Fear of deportation can be an issue for Latinos in the U.S. without permission, though the Department of Homeland Security says vaccination sites will be considered off limits for routine enforcement.

That’s as may be. But an important point here is that even people whose documentation is in exquisite, immaculate order, are affected by an overwhelming mountain of regulations and suspicions. People who feel like a sword is hanging over their heads might even neglect their health to avoid attracting official attention. This is only one reason why the outreach efforts of such groups as COVIDLatino.org are so vital.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “About COVIDLatino.org,” undated
Source: “A Latino cartoonist is using his art to encourage vaccinations,” NBCNews.com, 08/05/21
Source: “Latinx political cartooning during the COVID-19 global pandemic: coping and processing via Lalo Alcaraz’s and Eric J. Garcia’s social artivism,” TAndFOnline.com, 09/15/20
Source: “Lalo Alcaraz Gets Creative in Cartoons Meant to Encourage People to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine,” Remezcla.com, 08/17/21
Source: “ Amid climbing COVID cases and community efforts, racial disparity in vaccinations appears to be narrowing,” USAToday.com, 08/05/21
​Image by Lalo Alcaraz (@laloalcaraz) used with permission of the artist.

Coronavirus Chronicles — How Have Latinos Been Doing?

NBC News recently interviewed the first Hispanic Surgeon General of the United States (second Bush administration), Dr. Antonia Novello, who…

[…] drew a comparison with Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, where teachers must be vaccinated and schools have to comply with regulations, like ventilating classrooms, and masking is enforced.

Dr. Novello also believes in masks, hand hygiene, and social distancing, and she helps out at vaccination clinics.

Speaking of government, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), race and ethnicity information is only available for about 60% of the U.S. population. Consequently, it is not easy to keep track of who is in the most trouble, who is the most underserved by the health care system, and so forth.

Some racial and ethnic groups are disproportionally impacted by obesity. The disparities are described as notable. The figures on which these percentages are based were collected from 2017 to 2019. There is always a time lag in putting these numerical pictures together, but it is unlikely that matters have improved in the meantime:

Non-Hispanic Black adults had the highest prevalence of self-reported obesity (39.8%), followed by Hispanic adults (33.8%), and non-Hispanic White adults (29.9%).

15 states had an obesity prevalence of 35 percent or higher among Hispanic adults.

When obesity, poverty, and minority join forces, as they so often do, the result is likely to be a life with severely impaired health. Add a virus and its freaky spinoffs to the recipe, and large populations are in for a wild ride.

Is it all just “resistance”?

In June of 2020, when the pandemic was in its relative infancy, Shelby Lin Erdman wrote about San Francisco’s Hispanic population, already known to be disproportionately affected, and about why some people were just not sheltering in place like they were supposed to. She wrote,

Many of those infected could not work from home and could not miss work.

They were delivery drivers, supermarket shelf stockers, hospital cleaning staff, short-order cooks, health aides, and other low-income, high-risk service workers. Historically, ethnic and socioeconomic inequities in a community are known to have health effects, and this is one of them. In the densely populated and very Hispanic Mission District, several authorities got together to offer free testing for the virus. In a three-day period in April, they got to about 4,000 area residents. Erdman wrote,

The study found that 2% of those given a PCR test — the most accurate type of diagnostic test — were infected with Covid-19 at the time of the test. Among those who tested positive, infection rates were almost 20 times higher for Hispanic residents than non-Hispanics… Antibody tests indicated 6% of residents had contracted the virus at some point since the beginning of the pandemic…

The survey also found more than half of those testing positive, or 52%, reported no symptoms of COVID-19. Dr. Gabriel Chamie explained why this is so dangerous:

Symptom-based testing would have failed to detect over 40% of active infections, and only one person who tested positive required hospitalization, suggesting the vast majority — many of whom had high levels of virus — would not have been diagnosed without community-based testing.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “First Hispanic surgeon general on Covid: Use ‘common sense,’ save your family,” NBCNews.com, 08/23/21
Source: “Obesity, Race/Ethnicity, and COVID-19,” CDC.gov, undated
Source: “Coronavirus continued to spread among San Francisco’s low-income Hispanic population despite lockdown, study finds,” CNN.com, 06/18/20
Image by City of Detroit/Public Domain

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Youngification of COVID-19, Continued

In July of this year, news media continued to report on the admission of non-geriatric folk to hospitals all over the country. Florida reported 214,000 new cases, an increase of 57% over the previous week. In Jacksonville, the Intensive Care Units at St. Vincent’s and Naval Hospital were full of unvaccinated patients of middle age and younger, who were undergoing such ordeals as respiratory failure and renal failure.

By mid-August (earlier this month as this is written), California was a mess. UC Davis Medical Center was “putting a much younger generation of Sacramentans on life support than they did earlier in the pandemic.” By this, they meant people younger than 40, which three out of five COVID-19 emergency department cases now were.

From Nashville, TN, Vanderbilt Health reported that “Patients we are treating for COVID-19 are all ages, with some in their early to mid-20s being very sick.” For two groups, adults in their 30s and children, hospitalization rates were at an all-time high.

A sneaking suspicion

By now, the old familiar refrain that “healthy people don’t catch it” is harder to believe than ever. High school and college football players are coming down with COVID. It is even possible that starting out in better shape can be a drawback, and somehow make the course of the disease worse. Or maybe the problem is that young healthy individuals are more likely to be out and about, working or recreating in settings where the ferocious Delta variant can catch them.

It might be that aside from maintaining a high level of fitness, they are unvaccinated. It took a while for the younger demographic to become eligible to receive the available vaccines. In many cases, the invincible optimism of youth prevents them from even trying to get the shots. This suspicion, that being fundamentally healthy might cause some patients to have more severe cases, is just a shadowy impression at the moment, but it has been mentioned and is worth keeping an eye on.

Collateral damage

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospitalizations of Americans between 30 and 39 years of age are “more than 30% higher than their previous peak.” In that group, a lot of people are parents of young children and teens. Who is taking care of their children? Who is making sure they eat things that are good for them and don’t eat things that are bad for them? Distraught relatives of ICU patients might forget to supervise children who need to weigh their portions. In a time of grief, the traditional human response is to feed people lots of comfort food. As always, the coronavirus and the obesity epidemic are partners in crime.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “UC Davis emergency room is seeing ‘astonishing’ numbers of young people with COVID-19,” SacBee.com, 08/13/21
Source: “Rates of Covid-19 hospitalizations for children and adults under 50 reach their highest levels yet, CDC data shows,” CNN.com, 08/20/21
Image by Dale Simonson/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Youngification of COVID-19

Let’s recall one of the mid-April 2021 headlines: “More young people are getting hospitalized as Covid variants spread.” Even back then, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control, was saying that more young adults were showing up in hospitals, due to the increasingly contagious variants. They were also the last group prioritized to receive vaccines and, no disrespect intended, it’s a high-risk demographic that likes to play contact sports and congregate in nightspots. As for adolescents,

In Michigan, where Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are rapidly increasing, case rates are at an all-time high for those age 19 and younger, according to state data published April 6.

As the month progressed, the state’s hospitals reported filling up with middle-aged (not geriatric) adults, and with grownups even younger, who, as Childhood Obesity News has pointed out, are the grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, guardians, caregivers, teachers, spiritual counselors, coaches, and role models of children. Reporters Mitch Smith and Sarah Mervosh wrote:

Michigan hospitals are now admitting about twice as many coronavirus patients in their 30s and 40s as they were during the fall peak… Younger patients are coming in more often with serious cases of Covid-19.

Within days, the Chicago Medical Society’s COVID-19 task force announced the increasing hospitalization of “people in their 30s, 40s and 50s — young people who are really sick.” Nationwide, adults under 50 poured into emergency rooms and filled up Intensive Care units. Journalist Will Stone wrote,

Fortunately, the chance of dying of covid remains very small for people under 50, but this age group can become seriously ill or experience long-term symptoms after the initial infection. People with underlying conditions such as obesity and heart disease are also more likely to become seriously ill.

In Washington State, Seattle and King county hospitals were receiving more people in their 20s than in their 70s. The press quoted a doctor who had recently admitted two patients in their late 30s, previously healthy, with heart failure caused by COVID. He suggested that rather than fearing death — which, after all, is an end to problems — the public might more realistically fear irreparable organ damage that would affect decades of life. (Affecting, of course, their ability to parent, caregive, teach, counsel, and coach children.)

In Colorado, Dr. Michelle Barron, of the gigantic UCHealth system, said that over the past few weeks the median age of COVID patients has dropped from 59-ish to around 48. As the summer wore on, medical personnel became more forthcoming about their emotionally wrenching experiences in treating patients who were simply not going to make it.

Dr. Brytney Cobia of the Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama, wrote a Facebook post saying,

I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections. One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “More young people are getting hospitalized as Covid variants spread,” CNBC.com, 04/16/21
Source: “Michigan’s Covid Wards Are Filling Up With Younger Patients,” NYTimes.com, 04/25/25
Source: “COVID doesn’t discriminate by age: Disease is on the rise for younger kids,” DailyMontanan.com, 05/08/21
Source: “‘I’m sorry, but it’s too late’: Alabama doctor on treating unvaccinated, dying COVID patients,” AL.com, 07/21/21
Image by Phil Roeder/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Who Catches Covid-19? (Encore)

Some people still believe that COVID-19 only pursues elderly, obese, diabetic, chronically ill, or otherwise previously debilitated people. But no. We have already looked at three stories about healthy, active, above-averagely fit men in their early 40s, and here is another — this time, an elementary school coach.

Terry Greear and his wife were planning to be vaccinated as soon as their age group became eligible. Before that could happen, Terry spiked a fever and had trouble breathing, and his fingers turned blue. He was rushed to the Emergency Room and admitted to the ICU. He doesn’t remember much about the next 72 days because he spent most of them hooked up to a ventilator, in the obligatory induced coma. His lungs collapsed twice, and a lung bypass machine joined the crew.

Eventually, things turned around, and he was discharged, with a portable oxygen tank and a walker, to an intensive rehab program. Back home, he struggled with the walk from the front door to the mailbox. Eventually, he could even make it around the block, or play a bit of basketball. Following the now-familiar course, the patient had lost 50 pounds and could not put on his own socks. Greear says,

There was no way in the world I could do that. My brain is saying: This is what you’re supposed to do. But my body is saying: No, you can’t.

The focus is where?

But isn’t Childhood Obesity News supposed to be about, you know… childhood obesity? The connection is obvious. The couple’s two sons came close to being left fatherless in their crucial teen years, with a mother working one or more jobs to pay the bills.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, an estimated 1.5 million children, worldwide, have been orphaned by the loss of parents, grandparents, and other adults who were responsible for their care and wellbeing. According to a study published by The Lancet, almost 114,00 of those children live in the United States, which ranks fourth in COVID-orphaned kids (only Mexico, Brazil and India have more bereaved children.) Katie Camero reported for the Miami Herald,

[A]s data has shown throughout the pandemic, more men have died from the disease than women in nearly every country. Because of this, up to five times more kids have lost their fathers than their mothers… [E]very 12 seconds a child under the age of 18 loses their caregiver to COVID-19.

It is relevant to consult the long list of what might be termed obesity villains, some of which have been extensively covered in previous posts:

  • Adversity trauma
  • Depression
  • Diabetes
  • Food insecurity
  • Living in crime-prone areas
  • Living with grandparents
  • Loneliness
  • Low levels of physical activity
  • Low socioeconomic status
  • Maltreatment
  • Maternal employment
  • Mental health problems
  • Parental emotional distress
  • Parental work hours
  • Poor emotional coping
  • Reliance on a fast-food diet
  • Residential density
  • Single motherhood
  • Sleep deprivation
  • Stress
  • Suicide
  • Teen pregnancy

All these factors could potentially contribute to childhood obesity, and any of them could affect the children of adults lost to COVID. What is more, says co-lead author Dr. Juliette Unwin,

Our study establishes minimum estimates — lower bounds — for the numbers of children who lost parents and /or grandparents. Tragically, many demographic, epidemiological and healthcare factors suggest that the true numbers affected could be orders of magnitude larger.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Meet the Florida coach who fought hard to beat Covid and now has a message for anyone who hasn’t gotten the vaccine,” CNN.com, 08/10/21
Source: “US No. 4 in the world with most orphaned children by COVID,” MiamiHerald.com, 07/21/21
Image by Image Catalog/Public Domain

Coronavirus Chronicles — Who Catches COVID-19? (Continued)

After all these months, some people still believe that kids can’t catch the virus, and neither can healthy, non-obese adults who take care of themselves, watch their diet, exercise regularly, and swallow zinc supplements. Neither proposition is supportable.

Childhood Obesity News is aware that overweight and obese children are more susceptible. SARS-CoV-2 seems to have an affinity for fat cells. So there is plenty of reasons to worry about those kids, and also about the normal-weight kids who have already gotten COVID or are in danger of getting it. Some are so adversely affected that they can’t get back on track, and are destined to become next decade’s morbidly obese children and youth.

When adults become critically ill or die, kids lose their parents and grandparents, their guardians and mentors and caregivers, teachers and coaches. Which is why it is important to emphasize, as often as possible, that ostensibly healthy adults can definitely catch coronavirus.

An equal-opportunity predator

Although the virus considers fat cells to be a congenial environment, apparently it would just as soon take up residence in a moderately well-maintained body or even an exceptionally sculptured one.

In Texas, 44-year-old gym owner Antonio Rodriguez, whose condition was several notches above fit, dragged his feet on making a vaccination appointment. When he finally nailed down a date and time, it was already too late, because he fell ill and was hospitalized, and nearly died of COVID. He told the press,

I was thinking I’m invincible… I don’t even have allergies… Right now, me standing up taking two or three steps feels like I just ran a 400-meter sprint.

Now, he urges everybody to be jabbed at the earliest possible opportunity.

In contrast, a Tennessee politician started out as one of those “no worse than the flu” guys, and then he caught COVID. Almost two months on a ventilator, plus a liver transplant, did not alter his opinion. In contrast to Rodriguez, he doubled down on championing people’s right to have not life-saving shots, but the virus. Finally back on the job, his first concern, reports Michael Daly, was petitioning the state governor to “call a special session of the legislature to prohibit local mask mandates and keep businesses from barring the unvaccinated.”

The journalist notes that the night before that letter was sent, the County School Board had met. Daly says,

The board acted by voting unanimously to impose a mask mandate that allows for medical and religious exemptions. Anti-maskers followed some of the pro-mask witnesses into the parking lot and threatened them for having spoken proven and documented truth.

“We know who you are!” one anti-masker cried out. “You can leave freely, but we will find you!”

Another warned, “Actions have consequences!”

Actions do indeed have consequences, a maxim so universally applicable that it can mean anything to the speaker or the hearer. We will be looking at more consequences that actions have.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “North Texas Gym Owner Urges Vaccines After He Nearly Died From COVID-19,” NBCDFW.com, 08/13/21
Source: “This Tennessee Republican Nearly Died From COVID. Now He’s Fighting Masks.,” TheDailyBeast, 08/13/21
Image by Stockphotokun/CC BY-SA 2.0

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Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Obesity top bottom

The Book

OVERWEIGHT: What Kids Say explores the obesity problem from the often-overlooked perspective of children struggling with being overweight.

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Dr. Robert A. Pretlow is a pediatrician and childhood obesity specialist. He has been researching and spreading awareness on the childhood obesity epidemic in the US for more than a decade.
You can contact Dr. Pretlow at:

Presentations

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the American Society of Animal Science 2020 Conference
What’s Causing Obesity in Companion Animals and What Can We Do About It

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the World Obesity Federation 2019 Conference:
Food/Eating Addiction and the Displacement Mechanism

Dr. Pretlow’s Multi-Center Clinical Trial Kick-off Speech 2018:
Obesity: Tackling the Root Cause

Dr. Pretlow’s 2017 Workshop on
Treatment of Obesity Using the Addiction Model

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation for
TEC and UNC 2016

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the 2015 Obesity Summit in London, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s invited keynote at the 2014 European Childhood Obesity Group Congress in Salzburg, Austria.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2013 European Congress on Obesity in Liverpool, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2011 International Conference on Childhood Obesity in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2010 Uniting Against Childhood Obesity Conference in Houston, TX.

Food & Health Resources