https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-does-not-discriminate-by-body-weight/ > At this point it’s been made to seem like common sense: Larger-bodied people are at higher risk from this pandemic. “Those who are overweight really need to be careful,” France’s chief epidemiologist declared last week. “That is why we're worried about our friends in America.” > In recent weeks, many news outlets—and a few scientific journals—have sent the same frightening message. A study posted on a preprint server last weekend by researchers at New York University provided fodder for the latest round of this reporting: “Obesity appears to be one of the biggest risk factors related to Covid-19 hospitalizations and critical illness,” Newsweek claimed on Tuesday. Yet this rhetoric is based on flawed and limited evidence, which only exacerbates the stigma that larger-bodied people already face in society and our health care system. That stigma is what truly jeopardizes their health, not weight itself—a fact that’s only more important to consider in the midst of this pandemic.