Unlike the Swiss or Japanese, we British are not known for our health. After Malta, in fact, we’re the most obese nation in Europe. Fully 28% of us have a BMI greater than 30, which for a man of 5 foot 10, equates to a bodyweight of 96kg.
This should be a source of national embarrassment. And you’d assume the Government wouldn’t want to make it any worse. Which prompts the question, “What on earth did they expect lockdown would do?”
Back in March of 2020, we were told that we “must stay at home”. Only “one form of exercise a day” would be allowed under the new regime. Gyms and sports clubs were closed, and children’s play areas were cordoned off like crime scenes. (This was all in spite of emerging evidence that the chance of being infected outdoors was negligible.)
The full effects of lockdown on our waistlines are only now becoming apparent. And they they’re not pretty.
In a recent study, Feifei Bu and colleagues analysed data from the COVID-19 Social Study, a longitudinal survey of British adults that began on 21st March 2020. Note: the sample was not representative, so the researchers applied weights throughout their analysis.
During the initial phase of the study (up to the end of August), respondents were asked about their level of physical activity on a weekly basis. In particular, they were asked how much exercise they had done on “the last working day”. Results are shown in the chart below.
Although the series begin after the start of lockdown, the percentage of people reporting no physical activity increased substantially over the duration of the study – from around 23% to almost 40%. Oddly, the peak of inactivity was not reached until the late summer.
If the government’s messaging had not needlessly emphasised staying at home, it’s plausible this change could have been avoided. In a recent meta-analysis, the majority of studies reported “decreases in physical activity and increases in sedentary behaviours” during lockdown. (Hardly surprising, you might say. But it’s good to have hard data.)
So that’s calories out. What about calories in? Perhaps people compensated for lower levels of activity by eating less. It seems they didn’t.
In a study published back in July, researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies looked at the impact of lockdown on people’s eating habits. They combined several sources of data to estimate the change in total calories consumed inside the home versus outside the home.
Unsurprisingly, there was a drop fall in calories consumed outside the home: although takeaways went up; visits to cafes and restaurants plummeted. However, this was more than compensated for by a rise in calories consumed inside the home. Results are shown in the chart below.
Each line on the graph corresponds to a different assumption about the change in calories consumed outside the home. The lower dashed line indicates that, even if you assume a 100% drop in calories consumed outside the home, there was still a sizeable net increase in calories – on the order of 10% or more.
Evidence suggests that, during lockdown, we did less and ate more. It’s therefore hardly surprising that 40% of British adults gained weight, with the average gain being half a stone. So you can add ‘20 million people getting fatter’ to the costs side of the lockdown ledger.
What’s more, 2020 saw the largest annual rise in childhood obesity – of 4.5 percentage points – since records began.
All this brings to mind the first of Martin Kulldorff’s twelve forgotten principles of public health. Repeat after me: “Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single disease.”
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Let’s get this straight. Ardern locked down her country, prevented almost everybody from acquiring any sort of natural protection and the pumped them all full of multiple shots which seem to have lowered resistance to infection, and then after more than a year of this opened the borders to all sorts of disease vectors.
From any logical analysis of the situation, this seems like foolishness and anti-scientific foolishness, to boot.
We’ve allowed lefties to metaphorically jerk off over liberty for nearly 3 years over a flu like disease. I think simply laughing at them is the most effective answer, as with their obsession about co2. Waste of time even engaging just carry on with life.
They’ve been doing this to liberty ever since the Bolshevik Revolution, or maybe the French Revolution.
The entire premise is flawed.
Bolsonaro’s handling of the “pandemic” can’t have been disastrous, for the very simple reason that he didn’t handle it. Others did.
First of all, the major decisions – like lockdowns – were handled at the state level by each of the states. Bolsonaro was against lockdowns but many states locked down anyway and closed schools. The major ones like Sao Paulo and Rio definitely did.
Secondly, things that were dealt with at a federal level went completely against his wishes. He didn’t believe in any form of mandates for jabs and yet Brazil has not allowed unjabbed visitors into the country. So someone other than Bolsonaro was handling decisions at the federal level.
This, of course, is just further proof that elected politicians only have the power that they are allowed to have. If like Bolsonaro or Trump to some degree they stray from the acceptable path, they are attacked and where powerful state institutions can override them, they do.
“If like Bolsonaro or Trump to some degree they stray from the acceptable path, they are attacked and where powerful state institutions can override them, they do.”
Or they are murdered.
A moot point anyway, we have all the evidence we need from Belarus and Sweden (and for that matter Florida).
I don’t like excess deaths because it compares the current death rate to the death rates of the previous three years and if the last three years in a region were not on trend, that skews the excess deaths statistic.
Deaths per hundred thousand is a valuable measure.
“Many commentators have claimed that South Americans are particularly susceptible to Covid”
That is absolute nonsense. Peru has the highest deaths per million, yes. But the next highest number in Latin America are #19 = Brazil and #20 = Chile. Eastern European countries have the highest mortality rate.That trend has been consistent for the past two years. Claiming that Latins are genetically more susceptible to Covid is totally biased bordering on r@cism.