Zetkin8 t1_j182ave wrote
Reply to comment by gagrushenka in Physical activity before COVID-19 infection is associated with less severe outcomes. In a study of 194,191 adults with COVID-19, those who were consistently inactive were 191% more likely to be hospitalized and 391% more likely to die than those who were consistently active. by glawgii
>adjusted for age category, sex, race, ethnicity, BMI, ever smoker, hospital utilization, HbA1c, comorbidities, Medicaid status, and vaccination status before COVID-19 diagnosis
no-more-throws t1_j18ltlh wrote
that seems weak .. so lets take two retirees, both with these same comorbidities etc, except one is still strong enough to walk around everyday while the other gets long winded and can hardly manage walking to the carport .. one would already expect them to have vastly different mortality risks, whether for covid or everything ..
basically it's a huge confounding factor in almost all these studies whether the comparison being made is simply between people who choose to exercise vs those who choose to be sedentary, or whether it is between people who still have the ability to be active vs those who are already weakened and homebound etc .. especially when you include elderly in such studies
(that said, ofc there are numerous better structured studies that show the clear benefit of exercise, certainly no doubts about that in general)
Zetkin8 t1_j18ri3t wrote
They didn't claim causation, just association. And, quite frankly, that would also be the outcome of the scenario you described.
SnooPuppers1978 t1_j18w52n wrote
If it was adjusted for BMI, the effect of exercise should and could be so much stronger, since if you would start to exercise your BMI would also improve, which is also known risk factor. So I think given a binary choice to start proper exercise routine or not, the actual improvement of risk odds is much greater than presented by this study, because of how they controlled for everything.
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