It’s about time someone said it.
Coronavirus is only a threat to severely old and/or severely overweight, unhealthy people, and Boris Johnson is not that old, so his obvious conclusion is that his allegedly bad experience with being infected with coronavirus is a consequence of him being such a fat pig.
Boris Johnson is planning a war on obesity after deciding his own touch-and-go battle with coronavirus was exacerbated by him being overweight.
The PM is ready to ditch long-standing opposition to ‘nanny state’ policies and launch a crackdown on the nation’s bulging waistlines after coronavirus is defeated.
He’s told senior advisers that the experience – which he famously said ‘could have gone either way’ – has left him determined to lead a public health drive.
Being obese doubles the risk of needing hospital treatment for coronavirus, research shows.
And with one in three British adults now clinically obese, the UK has one of the highest rates in the world.
According to The Times, Mr Johnson told some of his colleagues ‘it’s all right for you thinnies’ as he discussed the danger being overweight presents for Covid patients.
His own weight was 17-and-a-half stone before he went into hospital, putting his BMI at 36 when his 5ft9in height is taken into account and placing him over the BMI of 30 that means a person is obese.
The Prime Minister is determined to use the coronavirus pandemic to get people to be healthier and is said to be ‘obsessed’ with getting people to cycle to work.
Although this may sound like some kind of step forward in the path to recognizing that the virus is actually only as threatening as the flu, it isn’t.
Most people are overweight, and saying that the Doom Virus is more dangerous to overweight people isn’t really stopping the spread of senseless panic — it’s actually encouraging it.
They’ve been encouraging panic since the media started talking about the virus.
From a March 22 government document:
Perceived threat: A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group, although levels of concern may be rising. Having a good understanding of the risk has been found to be positively associated with adoption of COVID-19 social distancing measures in Hong Kong. The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.
What people need to know is that coronavirus affects mostly old people, and most “coronavirus” deaths had preexisting conditions.
Young people, even if overweight, are unlikely to die from it.
If the government wants the country to survive, they need people to feel comfortable going back to work, and if they expect people to do that, they need to come clean with the fact that they messed up, freaked out, and blew everything out of proportion.
They need to tell people the facts and let everyone know that coronavirus is just like the flu.