High BMI is NOT a risk factor for hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, or mortality in COVID-19, according to this large new study of 10,000+ people with the virus (CW: weight-stigmatizing language, BMI numbers): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2770946?utm_campaign=articlePDF&utm_medium=articlePDFlink&utm_source=articlePDF&utm_content=jamanetworkopen.2020.22310

I hope we’ll see major media reporting on this study, as it’s one of few studies on this topic to fully adjust for confounding variables, and definitely one of the largest studies that I’ve seen to date on this topic.

Interestingly, it found that although Black patients were more likely to be hospitalized and to receive mechanical ventilation than white patients, they WEREN’T more likely to die.

This may have something to do with equalized healthcare access (this study was conducted in the VA healthcare system) or less-discriminatory care in that system (where the percentage of Black patients is much higher than many other healthcare systems).

Also, Hispanic ethnicity was not associated with increased risk of adverse outcomes in this study, which again may reflect the better access to quality care that patients of color receive in the VA system.

That access and quality may also be why larger-bodied patients fared just as well—and in some cases better—than smaller-bodied patients in this study (see Table 1).

In short, this study supports what I’ve been saying since March: we need to stop jumping to the conclusion that high BMI independently raises COVID-19 risks; when we have good studies that control for confounding variables, those supposed risks disappear. It’s not the weight.