Have we learned nothing at all from Covid-19?

If there’s one thing we ought to know by now it’s that obesity can turn Covid-19 from a survivable disease into a killer.

In fact, the American Heart Association published a study in November showing that young people who were hit hardest with Covid were often overweight.

The study looked at data from patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at 88 U.S. hospitals taking part in the AHA's COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry. 

Patients with obesity were more likely to be hospitalized and had an increased risk for being put on a ventilator or dying compared to normal-weight patients. Risk progressively increased as body mass index rose.

Patients with severe obesity – those with a BMI of 40 or greater – had slightly more than double the risk of being put on a ventilator and a 26% higher risk of death compared to normal-weight patients. 

The mortality association was strongest in younger adults: Patients age 50 and younger with severe obesity had a 36% higher risk of death compared to their normal-weight peers.

"We didn't expect the results to be so striking for young adults," said Nicholas S. Hendren, MD. "If you're in your 20s or 30s or 40s, you're not bulletproof if you're severely obese."

Sobering.

Yet here comes Cosmopolitan Magazine - to be honest, I didn’t know they still published - with a plus-size model on its cover and this headline: “This is HEALTHY:  11 Women On Why Wellness Doesn’t Have To Be One-Size-Fits-All.”

This is a lie. Being obese is not healthy. In fact, ultimately it’s deadly.

Tess Holliday is one of the featured models. She’s an American who calls herself a “body positivity activist” who’s reportedly five-foot-five and wears a size 22.

I hope she is healthy. But chances are, if she doesn’t lose weight, she and others of her size will begin to suffer from chronic conditions as they age due to that extra poundage.

After decades of magazines featuring nothing but skeletal models, it’s understandable that voluptuous women want to be appreciated for their Rubenesque beauty as they also demand an end to fat shaming.

Fine. We shouldn’t judge people on their appearances. And ridiculing the obese is cruel.

But there’s no use in pretending that being fat is healthy. It’s not.

Why would a leading women’s magazine publish such rubbish? Because they’re woke, of course. They’re part of the no-judgment movement that actually pushes the narrative that it doesn’t matter how much you weigh.

Of course it matters. If you want to be healthy, that is.

Here in the US more than 40 percent of Americans are obese and a full two thirds of us are either overweight or obese. Being fat makes us prone to Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, certain types of cancers, stroke, joint problems and complications with Covid-19.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls obesity a "common, serious, and costly chronic disease," and identifies it as a precondition that increases the risk of serious illness from the coronavirus.

Perhaps our excessive body weight accounts for part of the death rate from Covid-19 in America.

It’s a mistake for a magazine to be selling the fiction that obese women are in good health. It is especially dangerous during a pandemic that is sending large numbers of obese patients to the ICU and the grave.

When you study the data associated with Covid-19, one thing is clear: The US would be in a better place if, instead of closing the gyms, issuing stay-at-home orders and imposing mask mandates, we had gone on a national diet and fitness program back in March of 2020.

We’d be thinner, healthier and out of contention for Cosmo cover girl of the month.