YE OLD VACCINE BOMBSHELL - “Will it still work in the obese? Our prediction is no.”

More than 107 million Americans, according to one estimate, can be categorized as “obese,” and researchers say that we already know vaccines that offer protection against everything from influenza to tetanus and rabies are less effective when given to obese adults than to the general public. A coronavirus vaccine is likely to follow the same pattern.

“Will we have a (COVID-19) vaccine next year tailored to the obese? No way,” Raz Shaikh, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, told CNN. “Will it still work in the obese? Our prediction is no.”

Early on in the coronavirus pandemic, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that people with a body mass index greater than 40, including people considered more than 100 pounds overweight, are at the greatest risk of becoming severely ill from the coronavirus. That designation encompasses almost 10% of Americans. But as we learned more about the virus, who it affects, and how, federal officials expanded that category of people to include anyone with a body mass index of at least 30, with broadens the amount of US adults most at risk from the coronavirus to more than 42% of Americans.

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