Can Obesity Prevalence Explain COVID-19 Indicators (Cases, Mortality, and Recovery)? A Comparative Study in OECD Countries

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 virus disease (COVID-19) is declared a global pandemic with multiple risk factors. Obesity is considered by several researchers as one of the serious risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 virus complications based on recent empirical studies. Yet, other scholars argue in favor of the existence of an obesity survival paradox and criticize the former group of studies on the grounds that they lack controls for race, socioeconomic status, or quality of care. The objective of the current study is to analyze the potential relationships between different SARS-CoV-2 virus indicators and obesity on a country-wide level based on an OECD report. In an attempt to test the counterintuitive possibility of an obesity survival paradox, the proposed empirical model relaxes the assumption of monotonic change by applying the quadratic design and testing which one of the two competing models (i.e., quadratic or linear) better fits the data. Findings suggest more complex relationships between SARS-CoV-2 virus indices and obesity rates than previously thought. Consequently, ethical guidelines referring to priority in intubation and intensive care treatments—published by the Israeli Ministry of Health in April 2020—should account for these complex relationships between obesity and SARS-CoV-2 virus. Indeed, there is a linear increase in mortality rate from SARS-CoV-2 virus with an elevated prevalence of obesity. Yet, other indicators, such as the number of infected per 10,00,000 persons, rates of severe SARS-CoV-2 virus cases, rates of recovered SARS-CoV-2 virus patients, and SARS-CoV-2 virus, as the cause of death exhibit quadratic, rather than linear, patterns. The reasons for these nonlinear patterns might be explained by several conditions such as increased metabolic reserves, more aggressive treatment, other non-SARS-CoV-2 virus complications for obese persons, and unidentified factors that should be examined in future research.