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| Flat on his bum Boris Johnson is the perfect metaphor for COVID-19 in the UK. |
Is it a coincidence that a certain European island country tops the region's obesity and COVID-19 death league tables? I think not. Probably the worst insult you can hurl at the British is that they are the Americans of Europe. Now that's a lot of baggage--which they mostly carry around the waist, as it turns out. Especially nowadays, that transcontinental
dietary "special relationship" isn't working out so well. Just as the US has the fattest people among all OECD nations, the United Kingdom has the portliest Western Europeans. First, let's face the
fats:
The UK is the most obese country in western Europe, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Its annual Health at a Glance report, published on Friday, shows that 26.9% of the UK population had a body mass index of 30 and above, the official definition of obesity, in 2015. Only five of the OECD’s 35 member states had higher levels of obesity, with four outside Europe and one in eastern Europe.
The OECD’s report, which says obesity in the UK has increased by 92% since the 1990s, illustrates the scale of the public health challenge, with fears it could bankrupt the NHS. Tam Fry, chair of the National Obesity Forum, said: “One could weep over the figures, the result of successive governments who have, for the last 30 years, done next to nothing to tackle obesity.
The British have also done next to nothing to deal with this obesity problem. Their lardy PM Boorish Johnson [
sic] has even suggested a
rollback of the UK's too little, too late sugary drinks tax. (Is being outrageously fat an indicator of Britishness from Johnson's point of view, too?) This sort of happy-go-lucky, what-me-worry-about-my-waistline attitude is actually not very funny at all given the health consequences and the associated strains placed on public finances. The right-wing
Daily Telegraph has even featured an
op-ed that suggests the UK finally do something about its obesity epidemic in light of the rising COVID-19 death toll there:
The same ailments keep emerging: diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. Data from the first 2204 Covid ICU admissions show 73 per cent were overweight, a condition linked to those diseases. Not only does carrying more visceral weight put greater pressure on the lungs, excess body fat causes the immune system to dysfunction, instigating the cytokine storm that floods lungs causing pneumonia-like complications.
For decades successive governments have been negligent in tackling obesity head on. Whether it’s subservience to the food and drink industry that contributes almost £30bn to the economy, or an aversion to becoming a Nanny State, obesity has ballooned without concerted intervention. More than half of the British diet is ultra-processed food with 60 per cent of the population overweight.
I don't want to say this, but I fully expected to see what's since become true: Just now, the UK has exceeded Italy and now
tops European COVID-19 fatalities after you tot up fatalities in Northern Ireland:
Britain has the worst coronavirus death toll in Europe, official figures showed on Tuesday, prompting calls for an inquiry into the handling of the pandemic. The government’s tally of fatalities across the UK reached 29,427 for those who tested positive for coronavirus, exceeding the 29,029 recorded in Italy – until now Europe’s worst-hit country.
Italy’s total does not include suspected cases, however. Newly released data from the Office for National Statistics showed that 29,648 deaths were registered in England and Wales with Covid-19 mentioned on the death certificate by 2 May. With the addition of the official death figures for Scotland and Northern Ireland, this was calculated to take the UK’s toll to 32,313.
The true figure is likely to be significantly higher due to missed cases and a lag in reporting.
It's not politically popular to tell your people that they're too goddamn fat. It's even more difficult to tell your people to slim down when you select "leaders" like the obese Trump or Johnson. The truth remains though is that the US and UK were in literally poor shape to deal with COVID-19.
