Did you find this answer helpful? Subscribe to keep up with all things Lifelong Learning.
Hello, I would like to get the unbiased opinion of a medical expert on this issue. I know that you are an infectious disease specialist and a Covid expert. My wife is 57 years old. In 2020-21 she had metastasized cancer, for which she underwent surgery/chemo/localized radiation. She has a BMI of 54. Yes, 54. She is a diabetic. I am trying to impress upon her that she would probably not do well in fighting the Covid virus or the flu if she were to contract either. She gets winded from walking across a room. We have each lost close members of our families to Covid. NONE of them had the co-morbidity factors that she has. Not even close. She said to me tonight that maybe it's best that she just go out and acquire Covid because the current variants are mild. What she doesn't seem to understand is that she is not a candidate to do well with ANY variation of Covid. I believe that she should try to limit her elective activities to ones that take place in locations where she can wear a mask. We have top quality masks that are rated for infectious disease wards and would at least give her a better chance of avoiding the virus. Yet, she insists on wanting to go to restaurants and other venues where her and others will be unmasked and in close contact. She doesn't think that she is risking anything. She thinks that her odds of handling Covid are the same as any other average person and also thinks that today's Covid is no more dangerous than a cold. She completely ignores the fact that she is a diabetic cancer survivor with a BMI that is in the top 2% of the population. She is also over age 55.She was recently vaccinated with Novavax and a Pneumonia shot at the same sitting and had no reaction to either. I am not convinced that she had an immune system response to either. I have a stack of articles, published in JAMA and similar outlets, that would say that she has the trifecta of co-morbidity factors and I want her to realize that the fact that she has those co-morbidity factors puts her at much higher risk than the vast majority of the population when it comes to these diseases. Please let me know what you think.Thank you.
I agree that a person with diabetes (I assume type 2 diabetes mellitus) and Class 3 Severe Morbid Obesity (for BMI 54) will put a person at much higher risk for severe complications or severe consequences with a Covid infection. It looks like you have tried to guide your wife with good information from high-quality peer-reviewed publications. I don’t know if my providing more publications with be convincing but there continues to be a consistent record of confirming that diabetes and obesity are associated with risk for hospitalizations and death with Covid infection. Your wife’s age is not particularly associated with representing a higher risk, but ages of 65 and older (more profoundly among 85 years and older) are associated with more severe Covid. I would recommend that your wife take Covid seriously—for example, last week there were 5,098 hospitalizations for Covid. That is a relatively large number of hospitalizations for a respiratory pathogen in late April/early May when we are well past the typical influenza season.
