Rebecca O’Neal does not believe she qualifies for a Covid-19 vaccine. She did not realize that her turn had come. Last week, as she flipped through the admission requirements for the state of New York, she noted the body mass index on the list.
Body mass index, or BMI, is technically a measure of obesity. The quantifier was set up by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in the 1930s to determine the risk. Since a BMI is a formula that does not take into account important factors, such as where body fat is or if any vital organs are surrounded by fat, experts believe to take the indicator along with a grain of salt. But still, a BMI indicating obesity was a source of upheaval for people who believe their doctors used it to discriminate against them because of their weight.
Mrs. O’Neal, a 34-year-old comedian and writer in Brooklyn, did not worry about it at the time. She calculates her BMI (it’s essentially your weight compared to your height), finds that she meets this technical threshold for obesity, and discusses a vaccine appointment for the same day. She received the first dose later in the afternoon.
“I did not know my BMI was thirty,” she said. O’Neal said in a telephone interview. “I cracked a lot of jokes about it on Twitter, but it was a relief that I was eligible at all.”
It is complicated to calculate on a BMI to assess the risk of serious health conditions. Many healthy people still fall into the “overweight” category based on their body proportions, without distinguishing between bone density, muscle mass and body fat.
This is especially true for women, black adults, and low-income people who make up the majority of Americans diagnosed with obesity by such standards. It has a lot to do with the fact that the original calculus was developed by and for white men.
For many, using their deceptively high BMI to get vaccinated is a ridiculous decision.
As Emma Specter put it in Vogue and wrote about her decision to get a vaccine based on the BMI qualification: ‘A measure of health that has long been questioned by fat activists and medical experts can make fat people actively benefiting for the first time. “
Many other people make the same decision and post it online.
Some have struggled with the question of whether it was ethical to receive a vaccine based on a criterion that would have little effect on the risk of serious illness.
“Taking care of the sick and elderly and the health workers, I understand it all – but at one point they had to open it up to anyone who could grab it,” said Raffaele Rispo, 38, a barber from Saratoga Springs, NY who had a vaccine recently due to his BMI, said in an interview. “I understood that the older, more ill people had to get it first, but when they changed it, I was happy.”
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Mr. Rispo has not seen his parents, who live two-and-a-half hours away from him, or his 15-year-old son, who also lives a few hours away, in a year. He was ready to return to some normalcy, although he understands BMIs are unreliable, he said.
Although unreliable, a BMI can serve a purpose; it can be used according to the CDC to look for weight categories that can lead to health problems, but it is not a diagnosis of the person’s body fat or health.
“BMI in itself is not a good measure,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an expert in obesity medicine and nutrition at Harvard Medical School. ‘It does not tell me if it is fat mass that causes inflammation. It does not tell me if it is waterweight, it does not give me the specific specific details. ”
For those who do meet the BMI requirement for the vaccine, the measurement offers a rare opportunity. William Antonelli said that as soon as his sister realized she was eligible for the vaccine because of her BMI, she also made an appointment for him. A few days later, Mr. Antonelli (24), an editor of Insider, his first vaccine.
“When it comes to a disease like this, there really is not a wrong person to vaccinate,” he said. ‘The problem is not that I’m applying for something I’m eligible for, it’s the rollout. The issue lies with the system of government that has led us to this. ”