Obesity and COVID-19 mortality are correlated.

In view of a conspicuous absence of any cross-country study linking obesity and COVID-19 mortality, we conduct an empirical analysis of plausible associations between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of obese in the adult population distributed across 142 countries around the globe. We observe a statistically significant positive association between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of obese in adult populations spanning 142 countries. This association holds across countries belonging to different income groups and is not sensitive to a population's median age, proportion of the elderly, and/or proportion of females. The estimated elasticity of COVID-19 mortality, with respect to the proportion of obese in adult populations, is the highest for the sub-sample of countries that belong to the high-income group. While limits of confidence intervals around the point estimates of these elasticities range between 0.7 and 2.1, on an average, every percentage point increment in the proportion of obese in adult populations contributes to an additional 1.5% points to COVID-19 mortality for high income countries. A positive association, observed between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of the obese in a country's adult population, is robust subject to alterations in the conditioning information set on age, gender, and income.

Health Interventions in a Poor Region and Resilience in the Presence of a Pandemic.

We focus on a poor region and study the nexuses between health interventions undertaken by a regional authority (RA) and this region's Holling resilience in the presence of a pandemic such as Covid-19. First, we show how a health intervention by the RA probabilistically affects an appropriately defined health indicator. Second, we compute the chance that the health status of this region's population falls below a minimum acceptable level in the presence of the health intervention. Third, we solve an optimization problem in which the RA maximizes the likelihood that the health status of this region's population stays above a minimum acceptable level at a given economic cost. Our analysis demonstrates that there is a connection between a health intervention, a region's health status, and its Holling resilience by presenting two applications. Our analysis reveals that this paper's methodology can be used to compute a region's Holling resilience with a particular health intervention. The main policy implications of our analysis concern the need for a RA to pay attention to (i) a region's health infrastructure and financing, (ii) sufficient engagement with the region's population, (iii) regional heterogeneity, (iv) data collection, and (v) the likelihood that sicker regions are likely to require more health interventions at a higher cost.

COVID-19 mortality and the overweight: Cross-Country Evidence.

OBJECTIVES: The objective is to study the role, if any, of excess body weight in COVID-19 mortality. STUDY DESIGN: This is a cross-country study of plausible associations between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of overweight among adults, controlling for age, gender, and income. METHODS: Parametric and non-parametric regression analysis. RESULTS: We observe a statistically significant positive association between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of the overweight in adult populations spanning 154 countries. This association holds across countries belonging to different income groups and is not sensitive to a population's median age, proportion of the elderly, and/or proportion of females. The estimated elasticities of COVID-19 mortality, with respect to the proportion of the overweight in adult populations, are consistently higher for sub-samples of countries that belong to a higher income group. On an average, every percentage point increment in the proportion of the overweight in adult populations contributes to an additional 3.5% points to COVID-19 mortality for high income countries: the limits of confidence intervals around this point estimate range between 1.5 and 5.4. CONCLUSIONS: A positive association between COVID-19 mortality and the proportion of the overweight in a country's adult population is robust, subject to alterations in the conditioning information set on age, gender, and income. Our findings call for an effective alignment of public policy regulations with public health priorities.