Hmm, Ali was just a big man who had not yet matured. Bag punching, chopping wood, and roadwork done in heavy works will build up muscles to an extent. Using the heavy bag is mainly meant for power and stamina ( although for the most part, punchers are born and not made.) I have seen fighters work the heavy bag in a variety of ways. I have seen Mayweather throwing COUNTLESS light punches, he had his trainer counting each series, so the thing there was to develop stamina, HOWEVER, George Foreman, Sonny Liston, and Rocky Marciano mauled the heavy bag, all 3 would use rather large bags as well. None of these fighters hit the bag light or with quick shots, each shot was slow and deliberate, but hard. I’m guessing that old trainer you are talking about had you doing dumbbell lateral and front raises to develop stamina in the shoulders, after all the shoulders have to have endurance to hold your hands up and protect yourself in a defensive posture. The speed bag is meant more for developing shoulder and arm muscles, teaching the fighter to keep his hands up than it is meant to develop speed, it is also good for hand and eye coordination. Marciano attacked the speed bag clumsily, looking to practice punch combinations instead of the way other fighters hit the small bag, however, his trainer Charlie Goldman didn’t care as long as Marciano kept his hands up. HUGE muscles can sap stamina and limit snap in the punches often causing the fighter to push his punches rather than punch with snap. HOWEVER, although not anywhere near as muscular as bodybuilders, some fighters, particularly heavyweights like Sonny Liston, Mike Weaver, young George Foreman, Oscar Bonavena, George Chuvalo, Ken Norton, and others had to be closet lifters or they were blessed with super genetics.

Ali likely ate a heavy carb diet until he left home and continual training kept his weight from ballooning. Although Angelo Dundee wasn’t a boxer, he had learnt to train from the best at Stillman’s Gym.
My guess is that Dundee got him onto a heavy steak and saturated fat diet and that, combined with the amount of work he did built up his body.
I attended a gym run be an ex boxer who had fought 20 rounders and trained professional boxers for over 50 years. He taught to use 5lb dumbells with arms outstretched to the front and then the side and lift to shoulder level and back down as slowly as possible as many times as you could.
Also situps on an inclined bench holding a weight behind the head and twisting the torso one way and then the other on consecutive reps.
One other bit of advice I remember was to only swim when injuries made no other form of training possible. Swimming develops muscles that are antagonistic to the practice of boxing [or anything else beside swimming].
Anther bit of advice while I remember: Hit the heavy bag as light as you like and as quick as you can, the purpose is to develop stamina rather than wear yourself out by smashing it with force.

I would have to check what Lewis weighed for his early bouts, but for a fighter to put on weight and muscle as he ages from his teens ( yes, fighters like Pipino Cuevas, Wilfred Benitez, and others turned pro as teenagers, Benitez won a world title as a teenager) is NATURAL. Boxers of the past AVOIDED weight training like the plague, at least 99% did, a tiny group like Randolph Turpin and Earnie Shavers did some weight training in the past. Even today, weight training is shunned by more than just a few fighters, some engage in it, others do it very sparingly. Personally I think fighters of today spend too much time lifting weights, Anthony Joshua was a good example and that probably cost him in his first fight against Ruiz. Joshua slimmed down for the rematch and regained the title.

Anyhow, back to Lennox Lewis. Fighters, especially heavyweights who normally turn pro in their early 20’s always routinely gain muscle and weight NATURALLY and even without weight training much less steroids. I believe Muhammad Ali weighed less than 185lbs for his professional debut, I think his actual weight was 182lbs. Ali was anywhere from 6’2 1/2″ to 6’4″ inches in height according to different sources, I will go with the 6’3″ figure. Ali NEVER touched a weight in his life and yet with just normal boxing training, mostly bag punching, sparring, running with heavy boots, and chopping wood, his physique became noticeably more muscular as he matured. Ali’s prime weight was about 212lbs in fighting trim. Ali turned pro in 1960 or 1961 and in the space of 3 years or so he went from a very lean almost skinny 182lbs to a muscular 210lbs when he fought Liston for the title, Ali had put on 28lbs of lean muscle with not even no steroids, but ABSOLUTELY no weight training at all. Angelo Dundee said that Ali never even did pushups much less lift weights.

You only have to look at Lewis’s early pro bouts to see he subsequently put on a huge amount of muscle; too much for it to have been done by natural means. While strength exercise is beneficial, the athletes you cite are abnormally huge anyway and almost certainly carrying extra muscle from you-know-what use.
.

🙂

People like to feel superior to others or they are just jealous of people.

You might consider how much of that comment is driven by projection.

You could make the same claim about someone like Angelo Dundee. Dundee training guys like Ali and Ray Leonard, I mean it isn’t like he really did a significant amount in making these guys great boxers. How about coaching some of the recent New England Patriot teams, or coaching the those 1970’s Pittsburgh Steelers teams? Hell, I could take those teams to the Super Bowl. How about Joe Torre and those 1990’s Yankee teams? Same thing. I really don’t think trainers, managers, coaches, etc., really make a helluva lot of difference in the end.

Cerutty was a vegetarian ratbag who got a lot of good press in Melbourne.
His star athlete was 1500 metres champion Herb Elliot, unbeaten at the distance, expert opinion was that Elliot was so good anyone could have trained him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Cerutty

haha. SPOT ON. Lennox Lewis carried 240lbs on a 6’5″ frame and was a physical specimen. A man that is 6’11” should damn sure weigh a minimum of 250lbs in my opinion unless he wants to look anemic. The 7’1″Wilt Chamberlain weighed 250 as a rookie and bulked up to nearly 300lbs.

You have Olympic weightlifters who SQUASH the vertical leaps of elite NBA and NFL players by the way. Mark Henry can dunk and he is well over 300lbs or at least he used to be able to dunk, the guy has to be up in years now. The late Brian Oldfield, a shot putter, could dunk a 16lb shot from a standing position under the goal. Oldfield was huge and looked like a statue but he would probably be “obese” according to the medical “experts.”

I think your last sentence tells the tale of the tape. A lot of the people that cite this BMI range bullshit are waifs “with extremely narrow hips and shoulders and very LITTLE MUSCLE OR FAT. People like to feel superior to others or they are just jealous of people. I think we call them, haters. haha.

That is quite a collection. Thanks! One that jumped out at me was Peter Snell (not knowing anything about him). Not sure if this comment is 100% true, but interesting if even close.

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7589658

5’10” 175. Still the highest BMI of any Oly Champ above 400m. McMullen and a few others probably were bigger with sub-4 though.

Other than marathoners being skinny and shot putters being big–which are not exactly shocking revelations to me–not much is jumping out at me from that data. What do others think?

I took a quick survey of selected Olympic champions and Tour de France winners where enough information was available to calculate both BMI, and age at death, in parenthesis, or with a tilde (~) where the individual is still alive.

100 meter dash

1932 Eddie Tolan -22.4 (58)
1936 Jesse Owens – 23.7 (66)¹
1948 Harrison Dillard – 21.8 (96)²
1952 Lindy Remigino – 22.3 (87)
1956 Bobby Morrow – 21.8 (84~)
1960 Armin Hary – 21.3 (83~)
1964 Bob Hayes – 24.4 (59)³
1968 Jim Hines – 24.3 (73~)
1972 Valeriy Borzov – 22.6 (70~)
1976 Hasely Crawford – 25.8 (69~)
1980 Allan Wells – 25.8 (67~)
1984 Carl Lewis – 22.8 (58~)
1988 Carl Lewis

400 meters

1932 Bill Carr – 22.5 (56)
1936 Archie Williams – 23.9 (78)
1948 Arthur Wint – 20.7 (72)
1952 George Rhoden – 21.5 (93~)
1956 Charles Jenkins – 21.5 (86~)
1960 Otis Davis – 21.5 (87~)
1964 Mike Larrabee – 22.4 (69)
1968 Lee Evans – 24.0 (73~)
1972 Vince Matthews – 23.0 (72~)
1976 Alberto Juantorena – 23.1 (69~)
1980 Viktor Markin – 21.8 (63~)
1984 Alonzo Babers – 19.8 (58~)
1988 Steve Lewis – 23.8 (50~)

1500 meters

1932 Luigi Beccali – 21.8 (82)
1936 Jack Lovelock – 21.0 (39)â�¹
1948 Henry Eriksson – 21.0 (79)
1952 Josy Barthel – 22.8 (65)
1956 Ron Delany – 22.4 (85~)
1960 Herb Elliot – 20.9 (82~)
1964 Peter Snell – 25.3 (80)¹â�°
1968 Kipchoge Keino – 22.2 (80~)
1972 Pekka Vasala – 19.1 (72~)
1976 John Walkker – 22.1 (68~)
1980 Sebastian Coe – 17.6 (63~)
1984 Sebastian Coe
1988 Peter Rono – 20.7 (52~)

Marathon

1932 Juan Carlos Zabala – 20.1, (71)
1936 Sohn Kee-chung – 20.7, (89)
1948 Delfo Cabrera – 19.9 (62)â�´
1952 Emil Zátopek – 21.6 (78)
1956 Alain Mimoun – 19.3 (92)
1960 Abebe Bikila – 18.1 (41)â�µ
1964 Abebe Bikila
1968 Mamo Wolde – 18.6 (69)
1972 Frank Shorter – 19.2 (72~)
1976 Waldemar Cierpinski – 20.4 (69~)â�¶
1980 Waldemar Cierpinski
1984 Carlos Lopes – 19.7 (73~)
1988 Gelindo Bordin – 20.9 (61~)

Shot Put

1932 Leo Sexton – 29.0 (59)
1936 Hans Woellke – 33.1 (32)â�·
1948 Wilber Thompson – 26.6 (92)
1952 Parry O’Brian – 31.0 (75)
1956 Parry O’Brian
1960 Bill Nieder – 28.1 (86~)
1964 Dallas Long – 31.6 (79~)
1968 Randy Matson – 29.9 (75~)
1972 WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Komar – 32.7 (58)â�¸
1976 Udo Beyer – 35.8 (64~)
1980 Vladimir Kiselyov – 36.9 (63~)
1984 Alessandro Andrei – 32.5 (61~)
1988 Ulf Timmermann – 30.8 (57~)

Tour de France

1902 Maurice Garin – 22.7 (85)
1938 Gino Bartali – 22.6 (85)¹¹
1947 Jean Robich – 23.1 (59)¹²
1949 Fausto Coppi – 21.7 (40)¹³
1953 Louison Bobet – 23.4 (58)
1957 Jacques Anquetil – 22.6 (53)¹â�´
1958 Charly Gaul – 21.4 (72)
1967 Roger Pingeon – 21.7 (76)
1969 Eddy Merckx – 22.3 (74~)
1973 Luis Ocaña – 19.1 (48)¹â�µ
1980 Joop Zoetemelk – 22.7 (73~)
1983 Laurent Fignon – 22.1 (50)¹â�¶
1986 Greg LeMond – 21.1 (58~)¹â�·

Notes

¹ Owens was a longtime cigarette smoker; died of lung cancer
² Won gold in 100 m in ’48 and 110 m hurdles in ’52; died Nov. 15, 2019
³ Prostate, liver and kidney cancer
� Car accident
� Car accident
� Drug allegations
� Killed by partisans in WWII
� Car accident
� Died when thrown by horse, hit by train
¹� Died on Dec. 12, 2019
¹¹ Two-time Tour winner
¹² Car accident
¹³ Murdered? Two-time Tour winner
¹� 5-time Tour winner; admitted drug use; stomach cancer
¹� Suicide
¹� Two time Tour winner; admitted drug use; metatastic cancer.
¹� 5-time Tour winner

I was spending my school holidays tearing out the ranges and putting in coal and oil fired Rayburns. Also water tanks on the hill, septic tank below the cottage and hot and cold running water. Some places hadn’t changed since the 16th C except for the coal fired range. Hooks on the ceiling for the sides of bacon. Kitchen cabinets were the rage then not fitted kitchens. We used to put our name in the concrete behind the Rayburns. Totally destroyed “Yr hen fordd Cymraeg o fyw” (the old Welsh way of life) all around Builth Wells. The things we didn’t get to are, literally, in the St Fagan’s folk museum now.

Yes, hill training is super tough, especially if you live near sand dunes. haha. Want a real tough workout, try jogging up steep hills backwards just be sure to watch where you are going.

Interesting. He sounds like an Australian version of Jack LaLanne who made it to 96.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_LaLanne

I have “fond” memories of literally throwing up after running too many hill repeats.

I think you will appreciate the comments in this thread by “Freudian.Percy.Cerutty.Hills.”
https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7944963

P.S. One commonality between Cerutty and LaLanne is they both had health problems when young. I think that makes their stories even more compelling.

You might want to check out one Percy Cerutty. Mr. Cerutty unfortunately passed away at 80 but he was quite the physically fit elder statesman. The guy inspired me to run hills, particularly sandy hills long before Walter Payton.

I thought referring to M. Marchand would be more useful than referring to my running time of 7.8 secs . for 100 meters, my marathon time of 1 hour 33 and that I can lift 2300 kg . I am also modest about my resting pulse of 21 , and my BMI of 7 and my blood pressure of 90 /12.5

Impressive. Also impressive is riding 100 km over the age of 100 (see link below).

Thanks for the pointer. More about M. Robert Marchand
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/04/508213332/105-year-old-cyclist-rides-14-miles-in-an-hour-en-route-to-a-world-record

“I am not here to be champion. I am here to prove that at 105 years old you can still ride a bike,” Marchand said, per Eurosport.

In terms of longevity , the greatest athlete is none of those guys mentioned above . May I propose for that slot M. Robert Marchand . He cycled nearly nearly 23 km in an hour in 2014 . His date of birth is 26 November 1911 – not a typo.

Some more on this topic.
Differences in life expectancy between olympic high jumpers, discus throwers, marathon and 100 meter runners
https://bmcsportsscimedrehabil.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13102-017-0067-z

Results
We identified a death date for 336 of 429 (78%) Olympic athletes including 229 males (55 marathon, 56 100-m 58 high jump, 60 discus), and 107 females (54 100-m, 25 high jump, 28 discus). Discus throwers were heaviest and marathon runners the lightest and oldest athletes (p < 0.01). Observed-expected survival was highest for high jumpers (7.1 years for women, 3.7 years for men) and marathon runners (4.7 years for men) and lowest for sprinters (−1.6 years for women and −0.9 years for men). In multivariate analysis controlling for age and gender, type of sport remained significantly associated with mortality with greatest survival for high jumpers and marathon runners compared to discus throwers and sprinters (p = 0.005). Controlling for weight, reduced the survival benefit of high jumpers over discus throwers, but had little effect on the survival benefit of marathon runners vs. sprinters.

That said, there is evidence that extended hard long distance training is hard on the immune system and can shorten lifespan relative to people who train more moderately.

I would have to search how Bob Hayes died?

It’s easy enough to find on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Hayes#Death

“On September 18, 2002, Hayes died in his hometown Jacksonville of kidney failure, after battling prostate cancer and liver ailments.”

Shorter is and was a very small man. He looks to be short as well as small boned, so I would be surprised if his waist was even above 28″ tops. So what? How much is muscle mass and how much is fat?

Look at that picture again. Not much fat on that man. And for him to be able to do the things he did running, there is some muscle. Just not the big bulky kind which many weight lifters prize so much.

My own personal observation on long distance runners, and I have known quite a few, is they age terribly.

In some ways that is true. Endurance sports (especially done to excess) can be very hard on the body (and the immune system). But I am not sure how that translates to longevity relative to having a large frame. Especially if the large framed man gains fat weight in later life.

another man who is short, light boned, with little to no muscular development at all what some people term as “skinny fat.�

If you think that then you don’t understand what “skinny fat” means. Stop just using it as a synonym for “skinny”. And remember, I argued above that your build is much healthier than most people realize.

Again, look at Shorter’s picture once more. Very little fat on him there. If you can’t see that and admit to it then you aren’t worth talking too.

But let’s offer even more evidence (rather than just anecdotes and opinions). Here is a 1975 study of runners which included Frank Shorter.
https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2019/05/29/the-1975-elite-runners-study-how-are-elite-distance-runners-different-from-the-rest-of-us

Body Mass Index (BMI) and Percent Body Fat: It should be no surprise that the athletes had a much lower BMI and body fat percentage than the average 26-year-old American male. Their average BMI was 20.4 kg/m2 with 4.7% body fat (range between 1.2 and 10.8%). The average American male in this age group has a BMI of 26.8 kg/m2 and 18% body fat.

Here Frank Shorter talks about his body fat going up to 4% as he aged and how that hurt his performance. Also note that he lifts.

http://livingthestotanlife.blogspot.com/2019/10/frank-shorter-on-forgotten-aspect-of.html

If you look around the net you will see statements about Shorter having a body fat percentage of 2.2 or 3% around the 1972 Olympics.

So are you arguing that Bob Hayes had a body fat percentage under 4%? Because if so at least that would be entertaining.

That film is disgusting!

It certainly is. Everything Murphy did is disgusting. But some are funny. I recall Stanley Kauffmann remarked RAW is a foul piece of work but still had him laughing.

Video Link

Regarding the waist of Shorter and Hayes? Hayes is a much larger boned and larger man, so he is going to naturally have a larger waist measurement. I would have to search how Bob Hayes died? To suggest Hayes died before Shorter because Hayes was a muscular man and Shorter is still alive because he was a toothpick is laughable. Do you remember the runner, Jim Fixx? Of course I believe Fixx was a smoker before he took up running and before he wrote his bestselling book, but it looks like long distance running didn’t help him that much. The amount of mileage that marathoners like Shorter put in are to the extreme and probably are more detrimental to a person’s health if anything. What exactly is your argument? Shorter is and was a very small man. He looks to be short as well as small boned, so I would be surprised if his waist was even above 28″ tops. So what? How much is muscle mass and how much is fat? Look at Herschel Walker, he is in his late fifties and still is a physical specimen. My own personal observation on long distance runners, and I have known quite a few, is they age terribly. Anyone who looks at those photos that you presented will see a HEALTHY, somewhat muscular man with little body fat and another man who is short, light boned, with little to no muscular development at all what some people term as “skinny fat.”

Yes. There was a reason I said “roughly.” Weightlifting was one of the first sports to get PEDs. Not sure if steroids would have made it to common use among sprinters by then.

Any response to the more relevant body of my comment?

Steroids have been around awhile and even before the 1968 Olympics. Wasn’t old enough to remember the isometric fad that was promoted as the wonder of the strength training world back in the 1960’s. So many people wrote books full of bullshit and made money. There was an American Olympic lifter by the name of Bill March, and another lifter, the guy’s name escapes me at the moment, who were said to have made such great gains by employing isometric type training in their programs. Well, March was using isometrics but the thing they didn’t tell you about was the usage of steroids. I believe steroids have been around since the late 30’s and early 40’s but really didn’t hit American athletics until the early 1960’s when March and other Americans were still pretty competitive in Olympic Weightlifting. After that, the sport was DOMINATED by Eastern bloc countries, namely Russians and Bulgarians, and lately the Chinese. Believe me, there were PLENTY of athletes using PEDs in the 1968 Olympics. And my guess is the Eastern bloc countries were using them prior to that.

Fair enough. I grew up in the middle of nowhere but it was clearly a better ordered nowhere than Mid Wales.

A severe lack of Vitamin D may also help explain why WuFlu swept thru NY’s orthodox community like wildfire

That is an excellent observation which had not occurred to me. Thanks!
Effect of different dress style on vitamin D level in healthy young Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox students in Israel.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21110005

Abstract

Ultra-orthodox Jewish lifestyle, which encourages modest dress and indoor scholarly activity, represents a risk factor for vitamin-D deficiency. Our study in healthy young males from higher education religious institutions located in the same geographical area showed frequent and severe vitamin D deficiency, strongly correlated with the degree of sun exposure. However, PTH level was usually normal.

INTRODUCTION: Ultra-orthodox Jewish lifestyle encourages modest dress and indoor scholarly activity. As such, it represents a risk factor for vitamin-D deficiency, a worldwide problem previously underestimated in sunny countries. Our aim was to characterize the vitamin-D status of religious Jewish males according to sun exposure and outdoor activity, and study the correlation between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH) D) and PTH level.

METHODS: Seventy-four young adult males were recruited from three Jewish higher education institutions (Yeshiva) in Jerusalem. Yeshiva-A ultra-Orthodox students (aged 20.1 ± 0.6) wear traditional clothing, live in dormitories and stay mostly indoor. Yeshiva-B ultra-Orthodox students (aged 33.0 ± 4.2) dress similarly but have regular outdoor activities. Yeshiva-C religious students (aged 19 ± 2.0) participate in a mixed army/Yeshiva program. Weekly outdoor activity time and degree of sun exposure were estimated by questionnaire.

RESULTS: 25(OH)D was 8.9 ± 3.6, 10.2 ± 5.7 and 21.7 ± 10.4 ng/ml (mean ± SD) in Yeshiva A, B and C. 25(OH)D was correlated with degree of sun exposure (r = 0.54, p < 0.0001) and inversely correlated with PTH (r = -0.3, p = 0.01). Levels below 20 ng/ml were considered as vitamin D deficiency. PTH was normal in 87% of vitamin D-deficient subjects from Yeshiva-A and Yeshiva-C (mean age 20), compared to 52% of Yeshiva-B students (mean age 33). Bone mineral density studied in a random subset (n = 14) of vitamin D-deficient subjects showed Z-scores of -1.5 ± 1.0, -1.8 ± 0.8, -2.1 ± 0.4 in femoral neck, spine and radius.

CONCLUSIONS: Severe vitamin-D deficiency is extremely prevalent in ultra-Orthodox males. Despite rare secondary hyperparathyroidism, they represent an important previously unrecognized high-risk group for metabolic bone disease.

I don’t need any scientific evidence, only a good pair of eyes. Take a look at the average ELITE world class sprinter, male or female. Look at their physiques. Not an ounce of fat and relatively heavily muscled especially when compared to middle and distance runners.

No doubt about the heavily muscled tendency for sprinters relative to longer distance runners. But we were talking about fat% not muscle%.

All well muscled, trim waists, probably even a six pack or two among them, and to attain a six pack, I’m guessing you have to be carrying below 10% body fat minimum.

For men. Probably a bit more for women. Notice that the % body fat I quoted for male sprinters in the 1968 Olympics was 9.8%. This article quotes 6-13% for men to show a six pack:
https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/how-much-body-fat-you-need-lose-uncover-your-abs/

Let’s engage with your comparison and look at Bob Hayes vs. Frank Shorter. Here is a photo of Bob Hayes in youthful competitive form.

And Frank Shorter near his competitive peak.

Obviously Hayes is incredibly athletic and muscular, but take a look at his waist then at the emaciated (unhealthy looking IMHO) form of Frank Shorter and tell me Hayes is not carrying more fat.

And let’s look at longevity like I mentioned. Bob Hayes died at age 59: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Hayes

Frank Shorter is still alive at age 72: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Shorter

That despite who looked healthier by the eye test above. One problem with the eye test there is that people built like Bob Hayes (or my friend I mentioned earlier) is that they tend to gain more fat as they age.

P.S. One of the nice things about looking at data from the 1968 Olympics is that was roughly pre-steroids era.

A severe lack of Vitamin D may also help explain why WuFlu swept thru NY’s orthodox community like wildfire — along with their stiff-necked refusal to practice “social distancing.” Similarly, Californians’ fondness for being out in the sunshine and fresh air may explain their otherwise mysterious low rates of serious symptoms.

If you (dearieme) are interested, utu linked a paper elsewhere.

Age depended IFR values from “Total COVID-19 Mortality in Italy: Excess Mortality and Age Dependence through Time-Series Analysis�, Modi et al.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20067074v2.full.pdf

Which has a plot much like the above for COVID-19 in Bergamo, Italy. It is the right panel of Figure 4 on page 8. They look at 10 year age buckets and what we see is a fairly linear (on a semi-log plot, like the one in my earlier comment) decline in IFR from 10% at 90+ down to 0.01% at 30-39.

If we assume this plot is representative (which I am a bit reluctant to do since Italy seems to be an outlier, and I am not sure of their analysis approach) then the age mortality curve looks a lot like the flu (splitting the difference between our statements about your (iii)). Just starting from a 10x higher baseline.

Table 2 has tabular data for ages 40 and older. It also includes yearly mortality by age (for 2017) and asserts that IFR roughly follows that curve above age 60. COVID-19 IFR is lower below 60, which also is flu-like.

In Mid Wales I was still helping to install drains, water and fires in the 1960’s. It wasn’t just isolated farmhouses. The railway village my mother came from used a pump for water (my task at my Gran’s was collecting water), ash toilets and one tiny little range well into the 1960’s too. Until the council took it over from teh railway post Beeching in fact (Harold Wilson abolished tied housing too). I lived in villages in Cambridgeshire where people told the same story. Rural poverty lasted a long time.

I don’t know about large towns and cities. What were slums if not dwellings beyond the reach of hygenic improvements? Literally millions were moved out of slums well into the 1970’s.

I promise I will look at your links later, I promise, first I have to have my coffee. BUT I will say this, I don’t need any scientific evidence, only a good pair of eyes. Take a look at the average ELITE world class sprinter, male or female. Look at their physiques. Not an ounce of fat and relatively heavily muscled especially when compared to middle and distance runners. Remember Flo-Jo? Remember Ben Johnson? Sorry but I don’t really follow track and field, I know those people competed decades ago, but those two names came off the top of my head. I can also state that some football players had world class speed as well, Herschel Walker and Bullet Bob Hayes who actually participated in the Olympic games, not sure if he won a medal. All well muscled, trim waists, probably even a six pack or two among them, and to attain a six pack, I’m guessing you have to be carrying below 10% body fat minimum. Now let me bring up some distance runners or even triathlon legends, Frank Shorter is the only marathon guy right now who comes to mind, sorry, just not my sport of interest, and Dave Scott was the first Ironman winner I can think of and a legend in the sport of Triathlon. I think Dave won the first few Ironman competitions ever held for a spell. Place both of these endurance athletes, especially Shorter, who has no upper body musculature at all next to Bob Hayes, ( leave out Flo-Jo and Ben because of steroids) and you want to tell me that Shorter is carrying less body fat than Bob Hayes? Come on, I don’t care what fudged stats say.

So much is genetic. I mean feasting on junk food all the time, smoking 4 packs of Camel cigarettes, and washing it down with a Jack Daniels every day isn’t going to help, but I knew a certifiable health nut who exercised daily, was a fanatic about what he ate, and the guy dropped dead with a heart attack in his fifties. Look at Jackie Gleason, the guy was a porker, he smoke like a chimney, and drank like a fish, and if I am not mistaken, Gleason lived to be 81 years of age. Seriously, he wants to live to be much older than 80 anyway. Have you taken a look at most octogenarians. I don’t want to live long enough to be bent over, walking with a cane, aches, pains, etc. Three score and ten is what the Good Book promises and that is long enough for anybody. I mean there are exceptions like Jack LaLanne, but that guy was borderline psychotic about fitness and diet, wouldn’t even enjoy a slice of cake, etc., and still he died eventually. I have an aunt who never exercised, ate what she wanted in moderation and she is 99 and still ticking, but she is mostly just merely existing. For the average person, no matter what you do, life starts going downhill physically at middle age ( mid 40’s and early 50’s) and it isn’t about to get any better physically as you age. That saying you are only as old as you feel and age is just a number is all crapola.

Dr Michael Greger looks a half second away from dropping dead. If that’s who you are going to hold up as some shining example of a healthy vegan, you can’t be serious. He looks worse than a cancer patient. Most vegans do. I’ll continue to eat meat, but not all the time. I have my own hens, so I’ll eat eggs too and when I get goats, drink milk. Essentially, living like my ancestors as much as possible, on real food. But hey, you do what you think is best.

I said I was an old man, not ancient, grandpa. hahaha. And yet you tell me your age and how slim you are now? So, you were a skinny pencil neck when you were young and you are even more of a bone, now? A skeleton is slimmer than a normal breathing human being as well, now which is healthier. I sure don’t want you as my physical trainer. lolol.

IF you were to check the BMI of a sprinter or a cyclist who engages in sprints vs. a long distance runner or cyclist, I bet you a steak dinner, the sprinter whether it be a runner or cyclist carries less body fat.

You are awfully sure of yourself. It is good to be right if you are going to act like that. How about we compare sprinters vs. middle distance vs. long distance runners?

Let’s take a look at this page.
https://coachesinsider.com/track-x-country/articles-track-x-country/body-composition-methods-and-importance-for-performance-and-health-article/
And focus on the highest level athletes (1968 Olympics) in their tables 2, 3, and 4. There we see for men and women. Note that these are averages for 8-79 athletes.

Men:
Event Type | % fat
Sprints | 9.8
Middle distance | 8.8
Long distance | 8.7
Marathon | 8.7

Women:
Event Type | % fat
Sprints | 13.7
Middle distance | 10.9

The trend is clear.

I like steak dinners so it is too bad I can’t collect in person. Though a simple “I was wrong” from you would suffice. Not that I expect anything of the sort ; )

Muscle weighs more than fat or am I mistaken?

Muscle is denser than fat which I assume is what you mean.
https://www.banisternutrition.com/fat-vs-muscle/

“On average, the density of fat is 0.9g/ml. The density of muscle is 1.1 g/ml. Using the averages, 1 liter of muscle weights 1.06 kg or 2.3 lbs., while 1 liter of fat weights .9 kg, or 1.98 lbs. An easier way to think of it might be: if you have an equal volumn of fat and muscle, fat is going to weigh about 80% of what the muscle weighs. ”

You shouldn’t be so quick to assume things about other people. And as Sparkon noted (and as anyone who has been involved in more than one sport should realize) different sports (or even positions within a sport) favor different body types.

It is also worth thinking about how the athletes you admire have fared with physical and mental longevity.

This self-description is funny. What is the point? No one here knows you or cares about your physique. Keep on doing whatever you want.
There is nothing special about your age.
I am 73 and am the same weight as I was at 21. Slimmer, in fact.
I sure don’t want you in my insurance pool.

Me and my friends used to see an older gentleman back in the day always riding his bicycle, he had a large waist from what I could remember, but then again, the guy was probably in his fifties like myself. Different athletic events or sports require different skill sets and different types and levels of fitness. A guy that runs 5 miles a day and claims he is in shape is only in shape for running. Put the guy that runs 5 miles a day in a pool and if the guy never swims, guess what? He will be lucky to swim a 150 yards without becoming tired. It is all relative is it not? To me, most LONG DISTANCE CYCLIST are indeed “shriveled up twigs,” HOWEVER the cyclist who participate in the sprints have absolutely HUGE LEGS. It is like the marathon runner compared to the sprinter. IF you were to check the BMI of a sprinter or a cyclist who engages in sprints vs. a long distance runner or cyclist, I bet you a steak dinner, the sprinter whether it be a runner or cyclist carries less body fat. Muscle weighs more than fat or am I mistaken?

Now, at 220lbs am I physically fit? HELL NO, not by a LONG SHOT, however, I am a FUCKING OLD MAN. Now,when I was 30 years younger and 25lbs leaner, I WAS very physically fit. So even being very physically fit at 5’10 and 195lbs I would probably be considered obese by some standards?? You ride a bike? Okay, you are fit to ride a bike. Can you run 5 miles? What is your time in the 440? The 40? Can you perform 100 bodyweight squats without stopping in 3 minutes? Are you flexible enough to perform a back bridge? You are an expert on fitness because you look like dudes that ride in the Tour and you carry lots of “lean muscle?” Okay.

Pro bicycle riders, or cyclists, are lean and muscular. You won’t see any plump guys riding in the Tour de France, where competing cyclists over the last 20 years have had an average BMI under 22:

Average BMI Tour de France cyclists

The BMI of the winners since 1947 also shows a tendency to get lower over time. The 2012 winner Bradley Wiggins had a BMI of only 19.1, as did Luis Ocaña, the winner from 1973… The heights of these two riders were very different (1.90 m v 1.65 m) but obviously they both carried very little bodyfat.

BMI of Tour de France winners

At the 2012 Olympic Games, the averages of the road cyclists were 180.5cm and 70.8 kg, with an average BMI of 21.7.

Disclaimer: I do ride a bike, but I’ve never ridden in any organized bike race, and never dress up like a jockey. Still, I am built just like the guys who ride in the Tour, and that’s not like any shriveled up twig, but rather with all lean muscle.

I do lift weights, I hit a heavy bag and speed bag, I skip rope, swim, etc. To show how long I have been at this, a guy at the YMCA, ( there weren’t that many commercial gyms back in the mid 70’s) stated, “what are you trying to be the next Bruce Jenner. Of course, things have changed quite a bit since then, especially with Brucie.

haha. A 5’10” large boned male in his late 50’s and having a 36″ waist is damn good. I guarantee you most of the people responding here have NEVER played a sport, aren’t athletic in the slightest, couldn’t bench press their bodyweight much less press their bodyweight, and they probably can’t even run a 7 minute mile much less a 6 minute or under mile. Have you people really taken a look at world class athletes? I was really into boxing back in the day and let me give you the height and weight of former light heavyweight champion and cruiserweight champion, Dwight Muhammad Qawi. Qawi was listed between 5’6-5’8″ depending on the source and had to weigh in at a DRIED OUT 175lbs to make the light heavyweight limit. That means that this WORLD CLASS AND WORLD CHAMPION ATHLETE would be considered “obese” by someone like your standards. Anyone who has ever had to cut weight knows that Qawi entered the ring at least 10lbs heavier after making weight. YOU PEOPLE on here HAVE NO REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE, the only thing you know is what you learn from books. LMFAO. Look at Andy Ruiz? As I stated earlier, he looks as bad as the guy in the photo, but the guy is in shape to box 12 rounds. Can you box 3 rounds? lolol. Btw, my blood sugar is 98, not great, but still acceptable,admittedly I don’t watch what I eat and I like my sweets. Everything else is GREAT. What are you people, shriveled up twigs?

I ran out of edit window. I would highly recommend taking a look at eFigure 4 in
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104704/bin/NIHMS603921-supplement-01.pdf
which is a sex segregated version of Figure 3 I included above.

The waist buckets are 5 cm (2″) each. The risk curve is fairly steep with waist size and at your BMI starts with bucket 3 (95-100 cm). That is larger than your waist and that group has the lowest hazard ratio shown of ANY) so I would say this paper backs you up. Just don’t let your waist get over 100 cm. And stay fit.

I am interested in what others think of these plots. For example, for men with waist sizes in the lowest buckets (and for the higher BMIs this is the third or fourth bucket!)the hazard ratios are almost the same for BMIs from 22.5 to 35. For women the 30-35 range is a good bit worse.

I’m fat. I would wager my BMI is about 15-18%

I assume you mean body fat percentage. You most definitely don’t have a BMI of 15-18 and it has units of kg/m^2 (though they are often omitted).

You remind me a bit (your responses in this thread) of a friend who was an avid weight lifter his whole life. Strong and healthy (but with an even higher BMI and larger waist than you) right up until the point where he became diabetic and then had multiple debilitating strokes. Very sad to see what a man like that was reduced to before he died.

I don’t doubt that you are healthy relative to most Americans with a similar BMI (giving you the benefit of the doubt on your approximations, 5’10” and 220 lbs gives a BMI of 31.6, generally over 30 is considered obese). But you might consider spending some time with this paper. For reference, a 36″ waist is 91.4 cm.
A Pooled Analysis of Waist Circumference and Mortality in 650,000 Adults
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104704/

Abstract:

Objective
To assess the independent impact of waist circumference on mortality across the entire range of body mass index (BMI), and to estimate the loss in life expectancy related to a higher waist circumference.

Methods
We pooled data from 11 prospective cohort studies with 650,386 white adults aged 20–83 years and enrolled from January 1, 1986 through December 31, 2000. We used proportional hazards regression to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) for the association of waist circumference with mortality.

Results
During a median follow-up of 9 years (maximum=21 years), 78,268 participants died. After accounting for age, study, BMI, smoking status, alcohol consumption, and physical activity, there was a strong positive linear association of waist circumference with all-cause mortality was observed for men (HR=1.52 for 110+ versus <90cm, 95%CI, 1.45–1.59; HR=1.07 per 5cm increment, 95%CI, 1.06–1.08) and women (HR=1.80 for 95+ versus <70cm, 95%CI, 1.70–1.89; HR=1.09 per 5cm increment, 95%CI, 1.08–1.09). The estimated decrease in life expectancy for highest versus lowest waist circumference was ~3 years for men and ~5 years for women. The HR per 5cm increment in waist circumference was similar for both sexes at all BMI levels from 20–50 kg/m2, but it was higher at younger ages, higher for longer follow-up, and lower among male current smokers. The associations were stronger for heart and respiratory disease mortality than for cancer.

Conclusions
In white adults, higher waist circumference was positively associated with higher mortality at all levels of BMI from 20–50 kg/m2. Waist circumference should be assessed in combination with BMI, even for those in the normal BMI range, as part of risk assessment for obesity-related premature mortality.

That said, this figure indicates you are in a fairly good place risk wise (in particular, a lower hazard ratio than any group with BMI 20-22.5) which your critics might ponder for a bit. But notice that the risk increases for waist sizes 2″ larger.

Figure 3
Hazard Ratios (HR) and 95% Confidence Intervals (CI) for Waist Circumference in 5cm Increments* and All-Cause Mortality by Body Mass Index (BMI) Category (Men and Women Combined), Adjusted for Education, Marital Status, Smoking Status, Alcohol Consumption, Physical Activity and BMI.

*Waist circumference cutpoints (cm) for men <90.0, 90.0–94.9, 95.0–99.9, 100.0–104.9, 105.0–109.9, 110.0+ and women <70.0, 70.0–74.9, 75.0–79.9, 80.0–84.9, 85.0–89.9, 90.0+.

I wish they had not lumped men and women together in that plot. Their eTable 3 has the results by sex. Looks even better for you.

In any case, good luck to you. I hope you have found an approach which helps you stay healthy.

Poles – East have longer colons than Poles – West. I could have gone my entire life without knowing this.
The intestines lose elasticity after death and I am sure this affects the results. A certain mania for measurement underlies all this.

Not compensating for anything. I am in wonderful shape especially for my age. I would even say that I am in EXCEPTIONAL SHAPE. Not bragging, it just is something that I have always been into and invested a great deal of time in so naturally I will get results. I have been working out on a regular basis since I was 15 years old and I am close to 59 years of age, so do the math. I try to mix it up with strength training, cardio, calisthenics, and even swimming. Last time I checked a wrist measurement of 7 3/4″ is considered large for the average male, while it isn’t exactly huge, it isn’t tiny either. Believe what you want, but I have forgotten more about physical fitness than you will ever know. Maybe my doctor didn’t like it when I made fun of her “cross-fit” workouts. I told her she could gladly do the hills with me anytime. Btw, I get compliments on my body all the time.

Suurrrrreeee… “large” boned… someone feels the need to compensate… LMFAO!

Thanks for that information! I find it helpful to include direct links so people can more easily follow up on what we say. So here are the links to your other comments:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/infection-fatality-rates-under-different-scenarios/#comment-3850895
https://www.unz.com/isteve/infection-fatality-rates-under-different-scenarios/#comment-3852062

Here is a link to the iSteve post on the NYC decision tree paper (Ioannidis not an author, BTW).
https://www.unz.com/isteve/your-odds/
And the paper itself:
https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.08.20057794

That paper is actually looking at hospitalization and critical illness (not death, probably because the sample size then was too small). Two observations I found interesting.
– For hospitalization the odds ratio for male is 2.8 while for critical illness it is 0.99.
– The raw rate of %male is 68.0% for critical illness and 62.6% for hospitalization.

I wish I understood which variables were obscuring the raw disparity in the critical illness results (anyone?). At first I thought it might be “First C reactive protein” (it has high ORs), but CRP appears to actually be higher in women on average:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741708/

Perhaps the right way to think about it is their critical illness analysis compares to discharged without critical illness so the 2.8x OR disparity from who is hospitalized is already baked in. Thinking about it some more, I think this is the answer. And makes those critical illness results extremely misleading when taken out of context. Notice in Table 2 that “Discharged, no critical illness” is 60.1% male while “critical illness” is 68.0%. Compare to the corresponding not/hospitalized figures of 39.0% and 62.6% male.

The Italian deaths results are dramatic. And your other comments include some useful observations about those results. I believe this is the paper:
https://www.epicentro.iss.it/en/coronavirus/sars-cov-2-analysis-of-deaths
The data you summarize is presented as a bar chart in Figure 2 which includes data for all ages.

As you observe, they really need to adjust that data for the sex balance of the populations at each age. I took a quick look, but did not find the data to do that.

Thanks again for that information. Those are good references to help evaluate the sex differences in COVID-19 outcomes.

Oh yeah, I’m fat. I would wager my BMI is about 15-18% which is pretty damn healthy for a guy pushing 60 years of age. My wrist size is about 7 3/4″ so that makes me pretty large boned. Lets see, Mike Tyson in his prime was 5’10” and in fighting trim weighed 216-220lbs with a 34″ waist, my waist is only 36″ and I am a senior citizen. My neck is nearly 18″ while Tyson’s was 19″. I hike 3 times a week through very hilly terrain with a 50lb weighted vest, and I have been a fitness buff since the 1970’s. I am fanatical about physical fitness, but obviously not as crazy as I was in my youth, just more important things to worry about. You are right, I am in complete denial, I am a fat tub of lard who gets winded climbing a flight of stairs because I’m not a 6’1″ 165lb whippet. LMAO. When you can do 1,000 pushups in an hour, get back with me.

BMI is some one size fits all nonsense. According to an online calculator a man (no gender differential) 6 feet tall and weighing a mere 140 pounds scores a 19, classified as being of “normal” weight. For real? Where, in a concentration camp? This is just more establishment baloney just like all the diet advice of the past fifty years increasingly looks like quackery. Use of this index distorts being able to look at these numbers in a useful way since nearly anyone who is robust gets classified as being overweight. It has to be an individual assessment of what that person’s body fat percentage is. Not to say that nobody is obese since obviously there’s plenty out there in the well known order of B-H-W-A racial groups. This is known through common sense eyeball surveying. Lots of people have broken free of the diet advice of the ‘experts’ through trial and error, finding out what actually works for them.

We know that those with that mental disease called “leftwingery” prefer a wider rectum to the shorter colon, and long slender fingers in order to more easily pick the pockets of working folks. But to each his own.

This recent study offers more evidence — as if there weren’t already plenty — of the bad effects artificial sweeteners have on our gut microbiome, and our overall heath in general:

Artificial sweeteners have become increasingly controversial due to their questionable influence on consumers’ health. They are introduced in most foods and many consume this added ingredient without their knowledge. Currently, there is still no consensus regarding the health consequences of artificial sweeteners intake as they have not been fully investigated. Consumption of artificial sweeteners has been linked with adverse effects such as cancer, weight gain, metabolic disorders, type-2 diabetes and alteration of gut microbiota activity. Moreover, artificial sweeteners have been identified as emerging environmental pollutants, and can be found in receiving waters, i.e., surface waters, groundwater aquifers and drinking waters.

https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/10/2454b

(my bold)

Dump the diet sody pop, and watch your health improve.

I know you find one factor enough for today, but I actually find the COVID-19 sex differences to be the most striking (both standalone and in comparison to pneumonia). Hopefully we talk about that soon.

Hi, I actually brought this up in a comment on the “Infection Fatality Rates Under Different Scenarios” column. I’d noticed that in Italy, if you exclude the oldest patients, men made up 73% to 79% of the deaths:

90+:

Women: 1,731
Men: 1,082

80-89:

Men: 5,329
Women: 3,421

So far what one might have expected given life expectancy in men vs. women. But:

70-79:

Men: 4,746
Women: 1,786

60-69:

Men: 1,881
Women: 537

50-59:

Men: 634
Women: 165

40-49:

Men: 138
Women 46

This seemed extraordinary to me. But one paper analyzing the deaths in NYC wrote:

“While men made up a grossly disproportionate number of both hospitalizations and critical illness, this difference was attenuated by multivariable adjustment for comorbidities such that gender [sigh] was no longer one of the most prominent risk variables.�

I found that a few facts may explain things. For example, in the youngest adults in America (age 18 to 29) they found the following rates of high blood pressure:

White women: 1%
Black women: 4%
White men: 5%
Black men: 10%

Which sort of thing might go some way towards explaining both the sex disparity and the race disparity.

Also, we’ve got much more diabetes compared to Italy, and much more obesity, which again explains why so few younger Italians have been affected by this compared to younger Americans.

The argument is not to not shower at all but just not to use soap on places (arms, face etc.) which get sun and, hence, vitamin D. Warm water and scrubbing is enough. Save the soap, they say, for those parts that obviously require it.

But surely they were all in place by 1957? The point Dr T was making was (I think) that since 1957 lifespans have increased.

I’m sorry to say this, but you’re fat. I’m not surprised that you’re in denial about your own weight though. Lots of people who are fat are in denial about this (NB: it’s the same as anorexics being in denial about their health/size), especially those living in the USA because they barely have any examples of what is a healthy human body shape in their direct social environment.

I don’t kid myself that they’ll lose weight … I figure they’ll simply be culled.

The case against HFCS is that it is added to so many processed foods. This is the food industry’s response to governmental diktats about low-fat diets. When you spoon sugar into your coffee or eat a cake you have some idea of what you’re getting. With HFCS, not so much. That is all I’m saying.

I wonder how long ago you took those notes and whether you have been keeping up to date.

Fish is an incomplete protein, and organ meats have carbs.

This is the kind of thing that gives cranks and nutcases a bad name.

And your qualifications as a nutritionist are?

You have appeals to authority. I have personal experience and the similar experiences of very many people recounting their experiences on the internet and seen in my personal life.

You don’t trust my experience? You don’t have to.

As to your trust in nutritionists, it seems to me that most nutritionists recommend the food pyramid, which is a flat out health disaster. You want to be obese, and get diabetes and heart disease? Eat the food pyramid.

Nutritionists work for large institutions and industrial groups in the pay or under the thumb of Big Pharma, Big Ag, and Big Boxed Food.

But again, you don’t have to trust me. And you don’t have to trust Big Food, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and Big Chem. You can experiment on yourself. It isn’t hard. It should be quite safe. So follow one of these regimes for a few weeks and see how you go. Then make up your own mind.

Did you get that last part? “Then make up your own mind.” You’re allowed to, you know.

During the 1990s, during “wild capitalism”, I had the impression the looks of Russian women improved compared to Soviet times. Feminine beauty was commodified – many were looking to find a husband or partner from abroad, and there was also a great increase in prostitution.

Thanks for that link. One nitpick regarding (emphasis mine):

how many of the 4063 were within σ of the average on the 10 ‘key’ dimensions.

ZERO.

Even if you refined it to the most important 3 of the 10 key ‘features’, only 3.5% of actual, real pilots had measurements in a σ cube around the joint mean.

Take a look at Table I on page 11 of the PDF. Here is the description of how they determined average from the text (emphasis mine). Your first sentence is a factor of 3 off while your final sentence is a little more than 50% off.

For the present purpose we have defined “average” more liberally to include all Individuals who fall within a range of plus or minus three-tenths of a standard deviation of the mean value. This definition seems reasonable on two counts:

1. It results in the middle 25 or 30 of a group being classified as approximately average on any one measurement.
2. It provides for most measurements a value range which is at least the equivalent of a fill clothing size (over 1.5 inches on chest circumference, over 1 inch for sleeve length, etc.)

Actually it was necessary to use limits which were slightly different and, in general, slightly wider than those just described because of the form in which the data were available. The limits were net to the nearest whole value of measurement, i.e., the nearest whole centimeter.

For a normal distribution, 38.3% should be within +/- 0.5 SD while 23.6% should be within +/- 0.3 SD.

What is interesting is that even 38.3% ^ 10 is 6.8e-5 while 23.6% ^ 10 is 5.4e-7. So it is clear there is an appreciable correlation between the variables (even if it is less than you or I would expect).

(iii) The population it kills is proportionately more old and frail than for flu.
…
(iii) People write as if this is true but I’ve never seen a table comparing the age-related outcomes of the flu and COVID-19. I dare say that “people� are right.

I think (iii) is backwards. We talked about this some in this exchange:
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/models-the-logic-of-failure/#comment-3847468

This paper has multiple variations of this plot for different flu seasons and countries. I’ll only include this one because the others are largely similar. I described this in words in the other comment, but did not include the graph because I already had too many.
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-10-162

Compare that to this worldometers data (which I divide by two to adjust for asymptomatic infections):
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

AGE | DEATH RATE all cases
80+ years old 14.8%
70-79 years old 8.0%
60-69 years old 3.6%
50-59 years old 1.3%
40-49 years old 0.4%
30-39 years old 0.2%
20-29 years old 0.2%
10-19 years old 0.2%
0-9 years old _ no fatalities

Keeping in mind that the plot above is semi-log we see the flu fatality rate declining about 10x per 14 years. More rapidly than for COVID-19, In the flu graph by age 55 the mortality rate is so low (less than 1 in 100,000) that they don’t even show it for younger ages.

And here is what the paper text has to say about flu mortality compared to typical all cause mortality rates by age.

Excess AC mortality rates in 85- to 90-year-olds are about 250 times greater than those for 45 to 50-year-olds, whereas AC total mortality rates for 85 to 90-year-olds are only about 75 times larger than the rates for 45- to 50-year- olds. A characteristic of exponential processes is that a proportional change in the process occurs as a result of a fixed change in the driver of the process, here, age. The age increase associated with a doubling of the AC mortality rate was 7.15 years in Canada in 1999, while the doubling age increment for influenza-attributable mortality was 5.33 years. The exponential variation with age is, therefore, steeper for influenza-attributable mortality than for AC mortality. Seasonal influenza, as a mortal force, is of unusual consequence to the increasingly elderly population.

“Also: TIL there was a study in 1925 that claimed that difference sub-populations in Europe had different-sized colons.”

Is a long or short colon better for health? I know rightwingers prefer a narrow colon to one of wider girth, but that has zero to do with the health of the colon’s owner and more to do with an aspect of the mental disease commonly called rightwingery.

That film is disgusting!

Have a death wish?
Eat vegan.
This diet is a dangerous scam.
Sure, eat only vegetables and you will show some improvement, for a while.
Then the deficiencies start to show up.
Homo sapiens is an omnivore. A very flexible omnivore, but an omnivore nonetheless. From the arctic to the tropics to colonial North America to peasant societies the world over, no one eats vegan who can afford to do better for themselves and their families. In particular it verges on criminal to inflict a vegan diet on an infant, or growing child, or pregnant woman.

Dear Radical,
Regarding my point to use common sense regarding bathing, I didn’t mean don’t wash at all.
Just spot-wash. maybe rinse the rest with warm water.
I lived in Germany for years. Germans are very clean. Yet in those days (seventies) many people—and most students—did not have showers or bathtubs. This was also true in many Pensionen, when one went on holidays. How did they stay clean?
TPA we called it (in English): Tits, pits, and ass. Clean the necessary bits. But leave your arms, legs, to do the synthesizing.
Of course if you are jogging and working out all of the time, and are covered in sweat, then you share a bed with three others, I guess y’all will just have to forgo the vitamin D!
Take three capsules of D3, 3,000 IU’s, per day.
Also, you could try just rinsing with water, not soaping up all over.

Actually, here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D#Photochemistry
is stated that vitamin D is formed in deeper layers of the skin, not on the outside layer.
If that is true, then maybe showering makes no difference . . .

Match your food intake to your energy output.

Then go with whatever diet/menu works. My Grandfather ate a selection of grease (leftover in the pan), bread, and potatoes that would make a nutritionist cringe. He almost made it to 100. Must have been the pale green Hungarian peppers which were declared a crime against humanity after WWI. I survived eating one, barely.

He allowed as he “cut back” when he retired from the mill. My late wife’s father always had a “propserous” look.. He also had to “cut back” when he leased the acerage and retired from his “city” job. The beer, chips and a “little extra” add up pretty quickly.

If you are not moving, soon you will not be able to.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/climate/air-pollution-coronavirus-covid.html
Obesity, Age, sex smoking, skin color, air pollution, where could all those lines cross?

“However, reducing weight is something which can be done simply by eating less.”

And moving around more… 😀

But basically it boils down to personal greed, a defective mentality and genetic attribute which the right promontes nonstop among the slaves. Be all you can be in screwing over your fellow slave in your quest to the bottom, but above all else, buy our toxic shit. Feed your face with it. Bummed about the shit we bury you with? Feed your face. It’s psywar that is all about emphasizing and promoting presonal greed. And it works. Look at places like the usa and uk. The completely zombiefied fattened sheep eat it up.

And keep getting fatter.

And fatter.

And fatter….

Most americans are grossly overweight. At least 3/4 of them. A little more than brits. Fatness causes many other health problems to be worse. Interesting to see that this article further confirms that age and males are more susceptible to the virus’s more serious conditions.

I can’t recall if I’ve seen Taubes or Lustig mention this, but there are secondary effects on gut biota: a diet high in high-GL[1] carbohydrate and low in insoluble fibre, preferences types of gut bacteria that contribute to inflammation by crowding out ‘good’ bacteria that convert insoluble fibre to short-chain fatty acids. SCFAs are important in regulation of metabolism and inflammation.

Worse still, gut bacteria are now known to express chemical signals that make us crave what they like – so if the ‘bad guys’ get ‘quorum’, then the interspecies signalling (between our gut bacteria and our metabolism and our brains) changes to make us crave shit that the bad guys want.

This is actually a really interesting field – but it destroys the silly ‘paleo’ nonsense – “Caveman meat good. Caveman eat meat. Evolution slow. Me basically caveman. Me eat meat be thin like caveman.”

Yeah, fuck that – it’s stupid (I’m caricaturing ‘paleo’ – I know they advocate plenty of fibrous vegetables). It’s known that humans have evolved structural and chemical changes in their digestive tracts as a result of agriculture (lactase being one obvious change).

Changing the gut biome is better done with fibrous vegetables (especially raw ones) than with meat. Meat doesn’t increase the food available to ‘good’ bacteria – so there’s still insufficient SCFAs being produced in the gut, which means that key processes that reduce inflammation will be running on empty.

Starving the bad guys and feeding the good guys has fuck-all to do with what cavemen ate. Beside, cavemen ate fuck-all meat. The key thing of relevance was that their diet had negligible amounts of sugar – fruit at the time was much less sweeter and more fibrous. And they didn’t eat very frequently (which it turns out is a good thing to copy).

Low-GL, high-fat, high-omega-3, massive-insoluble-fibre … equals “mostly plants, most of the time“.

[1] GL: glycemic load – a far better measure than glycemic index. GI is based on a ‘dose’ of a food containing 50g of carbohydrate; GL adjusts this by the carbohydrate content of each food to give a measure based on a constant weight of the food itself.

Also: TIL there was a study in 1925 that claimed that difference sub-populations in Europe had different-sized colons.

I’m not talking about death chance, but the chance to get infected in the first place, in usual conditions by usual diseases

Take the shower immediately before sunbathing for best Vitamin D and Testosterone results.

Fatter people simply seem to get infected less often, and get rid of it quicker. People seem to know of this correlation, since when I was little, and with a neighbor, she talked to a lady who was pretty fat, she complained that she gained weight and is already fat enough. The neighbor simply said “well, at least you’ll get sick less�

Read the stats. 74% of covid vics are fatties. Why would you lie on their behalf? Are YOU fat?

BMI is bullshit, because it ignores body type, racial and sex differences, and scales poorly with height. All of NFL would be considered overweight, including CBs and WRs with 30-inch waists. Most would fall into the range of obese based on BMI, while being capable of tremendous feats of athleticism.
Even many NBA players are “overweight”. A 6-11, 250 lb center would fall in the “overweight” range.
A specimen like Zion Williamson, who can jump over 40″ in an eye-blink, is well into the “obese” range. Even Yao Ming was another “overweight” NBA player at 7-6 and 310 lbs.

To be in the “low healthy” BMI range you basically need to be a waif with extremely narrow hips and shoulders and very little muscle or fat.

It’s good to see that ‘authorities’ are finally accepting what non-retards have known for a generation: BMI is a retarded statistic because it takes no account of body composition.

NFL linebackers average 6’2″ (in cleats), 245lb – solidly in the ‘obese’ range. ‘Normal’ guys who are 6’2″ and 245lb usually have a pronounced gut.

A key difference between an NFL LB and the male Lesser Urban Landwhale (the smllest of the landwhales), is that the Landwhale has triple the bodyfat. Also the LB will have a 32-34″ waist, and the Landwhale will be 130% of that.

(FWIW I’m 6’1½”, 235lb, 35″ waist – up 10lb and 2″ on the waist in the time we’ve all been on home detention… no excuses tho).

This is the problem with the medical profession’s obsession with portmanteau statistics – they are fucking stupid.

BMI used to be called the Quetelet Index, and was thought up by a Froggo-Belgian (Quetelet) who was a little too “wet patch in his undies” when it came to averages. He actually wrote –

“If the average man were completely determined, we might consider him as the type of perfection; and everything differing from his proportion or condition, would constitute deformity or disease…or monstrosity.â€�

Anyway… so he was a fuckwit for that alone.

Quetelet observed that if we grew a the same constant rate in all three dimensions, our weight would increase proportional to the cube of the growth rate.

We don’t, and our weight doesn’t… so rather than estimate the approximate rates of growth of the other 2 dimensions, he just chucked them out and squared height.

But why a portmanteau stat in the first place? And why ignore the obvious: that fatties – not ‘heavies’ – are fat around the waist (for men) and the hips/arse/things (for women)?

Anyone with a lick of sense understands that an individual who is average on all relevant metrics would be a perfect example of a shit human. Imagine being an innumerate, fucntionally-illiterate 5’9″, 196lb person with an IQ of exactly 100, earning $44,500 a year (the income bit gets slightly better if you adjust for age, but all the horror happens excluding income).

Furthermore, there is a covariance structure among metrics with some high correlations (e.g., digit length vs ulnar length; femur length vs tibia length), and some low ones (neck circumference vs digit length), and some negative ones (educational attainment in STEM vs religiosity).

The US Air Force has proved the fallacy of the average: when they were re-designing cockpit dimensions in the 1950s, they initially planned to fit an average pilot. (The old cockpit layout was designed based on the ‘average’ pilot in 1926, and fit nobody).

They took 140 different measurements from 4,063 pilots – with N that large, their estimate of the average in any one dimension was unbiased.

But – and here’s the thing – they paid absolutely no attention to the joint distribution until Daniels (the youngest member of the research team) investigated how many of the 4063 were within σ of the average on the 10 ‘key’ dimensions.

ZERO.

Even if you refined it to the most important 3 of the 10 key ‘features’, only 3.5% of actual, real pilots had measurements in a σ cube around the joint mean.

Daniels wrote it up in DTIC AD010203 – The “Average Man”?.

That was 68 years ago, but the medical ‘profession’ thinks that abusing a Belgio-Frog’s portmanteau statistic is helpful.

No surprise that BMI was thrust into the public consciousness by one of the most flagrant charlatans of the mid-20th century… Ancel Keys, the man whose research malpractice led to a half-century of actively-harmful dietary advice and who is pretty much responsible for the rapid rise in the proportion of Westerners who have diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cardio-vascular disease.

(Another thing that’s increased since we were all incarcerated, is my decades-old infuration about bad quant – because we are fucking awash in that shit right now. Fortunately John Ioannides exists, as does the CEBM… and r/AnimalsBeingDerps )

Agree. I call the ideal diet “meat and leaves” oily, fatty, meats and fish and eggs and nuts and so on, and then for the leaves, green non-starchy vegetables, things like kale and broccoli and avocados and all kinds of leafy stuff.

Also: Exercise. Being working class, I get a certain amount of it anyway but I’m starting to add more.

https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/g51w5o/its_vitamin_d_stupid/

Obesity is strongly associated with vitamin D deficiency

It’s Vitamin D, Stupid.

The authors are experts in vitamin D/ immunoloy. We immediately saw the relationship between the corona virus and the ongoing, world-wide epidemic of vitamin D deficiency and wrote this paper to inform the world and it was ignored.

We noticed that the immune system has been pretty much ignored in favor of completely unproven practices like distancing and masks.

IT’S VITAMIN D, STUPID

Finally, I’m feeling well again after five and a half weeks of wuflu. And it’s probably safe to say now that my wife will not have it, at least not symptomatically.