That is commendable. I know many with the opposite story because their gyms were shut down and life got complicated with everyone home, etc.
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I know saw a LOT of people out walking, running, and biking in our community. The difference was striking. Now itās gone back to the way it was before.
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Comparing U.S. COVID deaths by county and 2020 presidential voting preference | Pew Research Center has a graph that resembles the photo you took.
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I did observe a lot of people walking in the park and doing other individual outdoor exercise during 2020. There were also reports of bicycles and other equipment used in individual outdoor exercise or sports being sold out.
Of course, that does not mean that there were no people who stopped exercising because they would have preferred to do it in a gym or other indoor not-at-home places.
Interestingly, where I live tends to be an outdoors-loving area. Lots of recreational stuff really took off during the pandemic such as boat sales. However, many of the normal group outdoor activities were curtailed - races, running and walking clubs, team sports, swimming pools, regional park playgrounds, etc., and that might have had an impact on fitness motivation. Fitness at least here has an important social component, and many of those opportunities to meet and workout with friends were suspended.
The people I happen to know who gained the āCovid-19ā due to lack of gym and increased stress from the pandemic donāt live in my state, although Iām sure people here in the Twin Cities experienced that as well. Even my favorite pod (hosted by two well-known entertainers who live in CA and are parents of school-age kids) were saying that weight gain was a side-effect of the pandemic for them. I suspect it was pretty common, though I have no hard data to back that up. Fortunately, home fitness has really taken off, and our local health club has a remote option for classes as well as numerous workout videos available. Tons of youtube videos online as well, of course. However, I really feel for those in larger metro areas who donāt live in roomy single-family housing where they can set up their own personal gym, and may not have even had a park or similar public space to go to because it was closed off. For some of us, staying fit or even improving fitness during the pandemic would have been easier than for many others.
I know a number of people in NYC who were afraid to leave their apartments at the beginning of the pandemic. There are lots of parks in New York, but access to them may well depend on where you live.
We are in a semi-urban suburb. We often walked to parks, but mostly we just walk around on the streets. My husband misses the social aspect of the gym at the Y, but I am just fine with the small basement gym (approx. 8āx12ā) which has an exercise bike a bench and hand weights. I attached TRX straps to the rafters, but donāt use them regularly because they are in the way.
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Unfortunately, the evidence points to notable weight gain during the pandemic:
and from earlier in '21 One year on: Unhealthy weight gains, increased drinking reported by Americans coping with pandemic stress
As weight gain and obesity have always been significant risk factors for T2D (and this is in addition to family prevalence such as pointed out by ChangeTheGame), any acceleration in this trend can account for an increase in diabetes diagnoses aside from Covid. What could be happening is that Covid infection is a signal for, rather than a risk factor leading to, an eventual diabetes diagnosis. However, assuming the study of this population of veterans was done properly, the researchers did seem to find that, all else equal, Covid infection seemed to contribute to increased odds over and above the baseline group. The odds rose with severity of infection as well as amount of overweight, but even those with mild infection and no identified prior risk factors for T2D seemed to have higher odds of a new-onset diagnosis. So it seems reasonable that there is some metabolic impairment associated with or even directly resulting from Covid infection.
Here (IMO) is a helpful explanation of what could be going on (posted last year so info might be updated since that time). I was especially interested in the bullet explaining how a prediabetic state could more easily lead to diabetes due to Covid-related inflammation or possible steroidal treatment. The number of people walking around with undiagnosed prediabetes is estimated to be huge in this country - CDCās own numbers are something like 1 in 3 adults in 2018 (and thatās prior to the pandemic!) with only something like 10-15% of them being aware of it.
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One thing to remember is that a sudden onset on a global pandemic also affected many many peopleās mental health. For all the mentally healthy individuals in healthy relationships who used the time of shutdown to work on their fitness and health. There were many who really struggled and shut down physically and mentally. Iām not even talking about those who suffer with the after effects of long Covid. Those who small children who couldnāt get out, working and providing childcare because those avenues suddenly shut down.
I hope that the one thing we can all agree on is that most of us are extraordinary privileged.
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This. There was nowhere to go for many people. As a couple of examples, I personally know of three marriages that fell apart last year, presumably because there was nowhere for them to fall apart to in 2020. And we will clearly be dealing with the extraordinary burnout in the medical and education fields for years to come.
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Absolutely! If your marriage was struggling, before Covid, you could live very separate lives within the marriage. Covid forced people to live in close proximity for a long time. If there were cracks, they came apart.
Not only was this pandemic hard on those in the medical field for instance, it was probably also hard for those married to someone in those fields. Itās very complex, I feel.
I listen to The Daily but felt that todayās was especially pertinent for this conversation. One thing I took away was that with this variant, that you can actually have Covid but test negative for up to a week with the rapid tests available.
If someone could answer this for me. Say you arenāt feeling well but keep testing negative. Have many of the Covid symptoms. Could this mean you have Covid but not enough virtual load to be contagious?
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Yes, anyone can have covid but not have a large enough viral load to test positive. Yes, you could have a large viral load adn it could fail to show up on a test, although such false negatives are really low. (But not zero.) PCR tests are the gold standard with the highest accuracy. If you are concerned, head down to the local health clinic.
āSay you arenāt feeling well but keep testing negativeā¦ā
Donāt forget that covid is first and foremost a respiratory disease. You could have all kinds of symptoms, but if your lungs are clear, highly unlikely covid.
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We were with my D and SiL on Easter. Inside, sitting around talking, no masks. That evening they started having symptoms, scratchy throats. They tested negative, the next day symptoms worse, negative test again. Tuesday, very positive tests. A week later still testing positive and after a miserable week starting to feel better. We never tested positive or had any symptoms. I think we dodged it even with BA.2ās transmissibility.
I have seen a chart that shows that this is because of the way vaccines work. It takes a while for the virus to be able to ramp up enough replication to be transmissible even though you are having symptoms. Then finally it does. Things are so different from the first āwildā type now. These BA.2 variants have a much shorter incubation period ā my kids were exposed on Friday night and had symptoms on Sunday night. Not much of a āmost contagious a few days before symptomsā possibility there!
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My 90 year old mom who is not careful ( goes out to dinner all the time) but is vaxxed and boosted got COVID last week. āThe mildest cold of my lifeā is how she describes it. Only tested because of mild sore throat and she had a test lying around. Completely symptom free after a few days. None of her friends who she ate and was in a car with in the days prior to her positive result have any symptoms or test positive ( as all are 80+ thatās very fortunate).
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DH went to an outdoor birthday party on Saturday. On Monday, a person with whom he carpooled to the party tested positive (triple vaxxed, thought it was allergies). He has no symptoms and has tested negative every day since. Seems kind of amazing he could be in that close of quarters with her and not get this very contagious variant. Perhaps she was exposed at the party and not already infected/contagious in the car ride.
Just curious, was it a long car ride? Or just like 15 minutes?
1.5 hours each way.
Did he mask during the car ride?
This virus is just so weird!
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My kids have had several close contact cases around them. Thankfully, they have not gotten Covid. While I donāt know for sure, the assumption is that their friends/co workers are triple vaxxed. So maybe it wonāt prevent getting Covid, but it is doing a good job of stopping you from giving it? I also know couples that one got it, the other didnāt and they were vax + booster. This is all in the last 2 months.
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I recently purchased this for myself and my 80+ year-old father with multiple issues. I received them in the mail promptly from DHL. I thought about your son so I thought I would share if you are interested.
Being shipped by pharmacies in Israel. Instructions are in Hebrew but you can see in the first article how much to take.
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