was the failure to broadcast loud and clear “lose your excess weight and improve your cardiovascular fitness to reduce your vulnerability to Covid-19”.
I agree 100% but that is politically impossible.
Look at the sign language interpreter on the BBC news. She must be 200kg. Actually most of them are in that area; the Scottish one too. It is obviously a conscious decision by management. She takes up a big chunk of the screen area in the RH corner 
But seriously this is sending a wrong message to so many millions…
This is today’s world.
What is the situation with travel health insurance now? ( Cover in US especially.)
I assume UK nationals need it for the EU, including the Irish Republic.
In other COVID news ;-)
Graham wrote:
The major missed opportunity here, in terms of public health messaging, was the failure to broadcast loud and clear “lose your excess weight and improve your cardiovascular fitness to reduce your vulnerability to Covid-19”.
Nobody doubts that this message is a good thing in terms of public health in general – but in terms of Covid it is actually not correct.
Yes, it is a fact that generally healthy and fit people suffer less from severe illnesses like Covid. However:
- Realistically and in a healthy way you can only reduce 1 to max 2 kg per month. So even if such a messaging would help (on top of the general healthy lifestyle messaging) we would be talking about loosing <5 kg weight during a Covid wave. There is little indication that this decrease made a difference.
- While the data is actually quite good that people with a BMI between 25 and 30 do better during serious illnesses, this is based on statistics on people that are already at this BMI. There is little evidence that people who are currently in the process of loosing weight do also better – to the contrary: If you suffer from malnutrition (like while doing a weight reduction diet) when you acquire a severe disease you often do quite badly as your body lacks the reserves to cope with e.g. inability to eat for a week.
Overall: It would have been great if everybody was already between 25 and 30 BMI before the pandemic. The evidence for an advise to loose weight during pandemic is extremely weak (positively spoken).
Maoraigh wrote:
What is the situation with travel health insurance now? ( Cover in US especially.)
It’s obviously depending on the country where you bought the travel insurance. In general a travel insurance would cover Covid risks, but it is legal under EU regulations that they are excluded in the terms and conditions of conditions of your individual policy. There are two things you need to watch out for:
- Some travel insurance policies have a general “pandemic clause” and do not pay in such cases. This has mainly been an issue at the beginning of Covid. As most travel policies are yearly renewable one can’t help somebody who still pays for an insurance with such a clause.
- More tricky could be clauses that exclude coverage if there is an official travel warning from your national government. This is also included in some policies.
In Germany, there are some policies still around that would not pay, but the majority of the market and all of the major carriers do pay.
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
In other COVID news ;-)
In case anyone thinks that’s a real story, that image is fake news.
Finally. Tomorrow at 1600 restrictions are gone That is the 1 m rule first and foremost and travelling (abroad) as well as required seating at restaurants, concerts, theaters and so on.
Norwegian (NAS) reported an increase of 50% on ticket sales a couple of hours after the announcement of opening up tomorrow. They expect this to skyrocket during the weekend Still, 50% up from a rather low sales is nevertheless far lower than before Covid. It’s a long way to go before normal is reached, if it ever will come back (don’t really see why not though).
What about Travelling to Norway? (for non-Norwegians)
ISTR there was a Pilot who posted on here that got caught out and quarantined?
I’m not sure. With two shots, no problem, and has never been. The border controls have been rather strict for everyone. It seems like all restrictions and controls at the border are just gone though, back to pre covid days. But, we will see later today, there’s probably a catch somewhere, as usual
