Erin Farmer has never considered herself obese. The 25-year-old threw a weightlifter in the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials and was an athlete from the Arkansas State First Division, but the Texas Department of Health Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she do.
Farmer, like 42.5% of Americans, have a body mass index of more than 30, which qualifies her for the coronavirus vaccine in her home state. At least 29 states have taken their vaccination into account for people who qualify as obese.
When she learns the criterion qualifies her for the vaccine, Farmer feels a mixture of emotions. For one, she was ready to let the obesity label that had haunted her throughout her life, usually with negative connotations, work for her. She also felt that although she met the criteria for a person with obesity, it was an unfair categorization.
“I was an athlete all my life,” she said. “So my weight does not really reflect how I live my life and my lifestyle. I understand that people feel ashamed about it, because obviously your weight does not determine who you are as a person or how healthy you are.”
And information on public emotions related to obesity confirms this. Nirit Pisano, a clinical psychologist and chief psychologist at Cognovi Labs, a group that uses artificial intelligence to look at public emotions and behaviors around certain subjects, decided to use the company’s AI to study the case after working with talked to a client who was struggling he qualifies for the vaccine as a person with obesity.
“I’ve seen this great wave of people react really emotionally to this issue, so much disgust and anger,” Pisano said.
This is because the obesity label is difficult, she said.
“It’s an emotional problem for a lot of people. And even those who have either struggled with your weight or your weight or the stage you are at, get to it, see it this way in writing or just a word there.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contains a list of people who are overweight among those who face an increased risk when it comes to COVID-19. As many countries have expanded their qualifications, they have followed CDC guidelines on BMI as a broad way of classifying people as to whether they are at risk because of their size.
Sabrina Strings, associate professor of sociology at the University of California Irvine and author of “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia”, cites BMI as an ineffective and offensive way to qualify for the vaccine and said: ‘there is a much larger relationship between negative outcomes and race. ‘
Strings believe the vaccines should have been prioritized for groups based on race because the coronavirus affects people of color excessively. This is supported by data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project, which shows that black people died from the coronavirus at a rate 1.4 times higher than that of white people.
But the use of obesity to extend the admission to vaccines follows reports that obesity is a major factor in hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19.
The World Obesity Federation, for example, found that 88% of COVID-19 deaths were in countries with a majority of the population considered overweight or obese. And a study conducted at Tufts University last month found that 30.2% of U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations were estimated to be due to obesity as a primary cardio-metabolic risk factor. Other factors considered in the study include diabetes, hypertension and heart failure. When combined, the four factors are estimated to be linked to more than two-thirds of U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations.
However, Strings says there is no evidence that obesity is a direct cause of increased deaths or hospitalizations.
“If we look at these studies, they are correlations,” she said. “They always try to make it look like BMI is causing these negative health outcomes. But that’s not the information that statistics, especially not average data, can provide. Average data can only show relationships.”
Emma Specter, who qualified for the vaccine based on her BMI, wrote about the fat phobia and fat scanning surrounding the use of the vaccine to extend vaccine admission.
She said she initially spent time getting the vaccine or not because she thinks it could take someone away from someone else who needs it more, or a front-line worker.
‘Once I was told once that this is really not how it works, I can, you know, not direct a vaccine to anyone else, that it is based on postcode and comorbidities. “Well, once I learned that, I did not hesitate much,” she said.
Farmer and Specter both advocate that others should be vaccinated, regardless of how they qualify.
“I think if you get the chance to get it, you absolutely must get it just to not only protect yourself but also others to protect you. And if that means you have to go through society like obese or fat looks, then it’s OK, well, now you get the vaccine, ” Farmer said.
Specter said she needed to understand and identify herself as someone with obesity. She explained that many who qualified according to the criterion struggled with shame and embarrassment because of the society that characterized people with obesity.
“I think to be honest, we quoted it as a bad thing. And we quoted fat people as lazy and unworthy and unhealthy and so many other things that it’s really hard,” Specter said. “Like someone who was a lot smarter than me, who I can not remember at the moment, ‘you do not have to prove a certain level of work. You do not have to prove an excellent character. You do not have to prove not that you’re just eating salads. ”