KNN - it's called "Fat Shaming". It may help MDs identify who is obese or underweight but it it is a simplistic formula derived almost 200 years ago:
How useful is the BMI:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/255712
https://www.vox.com/2016/4/6/11377158/bmi-flaws-tessa-embry
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition/bmi/bmi-flaws-history-other-ways-measure-body-weight/
https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/bmi-drawbacks-and-other-measurements#1
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-bmi-an-accurate-way-to-measure-body-fat/
BTW I am 6'1" & weigh 188. Share your own!
as I asked - do you proposed putting obsese people on a crash diet when they have covid and are in the ICU?
Huh?
It is a simple truth that if someone is overweight they are likely to be less healthy and the more over weight someone is the less healthy they are likely to be. When did acknowledgement of this simple fact become "Fat Shaming"? Has this become the new snow flake, woke norm? Does this also mean that if someone is anorexic, we can't say that they are likely to be unhealthy because we would be "Skinny Shamming" them?
BMI is a pretty useless metric. I used it for simplicity rather than get into a long winded discussion of the intricacies and indications of poor metabolic health. The best
physical metric is to measure your waist to height ratio. Anything under 0.5 is optimal. However, blood work is even better, as per the parameters previously noted.
Ralph; you are the one who mentioned putting people on a crash diet when they have COVID. I never mentioned or even intimated that would be a suitable approach. Drastically changing someones weight and metabolic processes, while their immune systems were being so severely challenged, would be very unwise. The diet or lifestyle change should be done before you get ill so that you give yourself the best chance to fight off a nasty bug. This is why older people and obese people have suffered from COVID on a disproportional basis, because their immune systems are not as good as they once were or should/could be.
What I was and am suggesting is that people with good metabolic health tend to have robust immune systems that will help reduce the likelihood of catching COVID (and many other respiratory diseases) and even if/when they do get infected they are far less likely to get adverse symptoms or end up in hospital. These are self evident truths.
Obesity, diabetes and poor metabolic health in Canada and the rest of the world is a epidemic in of itself. Modern diseases associated with excess wight (not always, but generally), include cardio vascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, PCOS in women, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, optical degeneration, peripheral neuropathy and impaired circulation leading to amputation, Alzheimers and other dementia's...and the list goes on. These disease cost billions and billions to treat every year and put a huge strain on medical systems around the world.
Therefore, what I was trying to say in the original post was that if a government were willing to crush our civil liberties by mandating vaccination, why not mandate/regulate other aspects of our health and lifestyles that are bad for us; such as narcotics, smoking, drinking, driving .... oh wait...
BTW I am 61, 5'10", 162 lbs and ex diabetic, who was never particularly overweight at a max of 176 lbs (BMI = 25.1).....so its not all about weight, it just a good starting point.