[HN Gopher] QCovid: Personal Covid-19 risk calculator developed ...
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       QCovid: Personal Covid-19 risk calculator developed by Oxford
       University
        
       Author : bananapear
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2021-02-17 16:45 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (qcovid.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (qcovid.org)
        
       | aww_dang wrote:
       | Is BMI accurate for athletic body types?
       | 
       | I would suspect the risk would be lessened for healthy sportsmen
       | who are adequately rested.
        
         | pwinwood wrote:
         | During my Personal Trainer course a few years ago it was stated
         | that an athletic build does not affect BMI
        
           | Delk wrote:
           | AFAIK some athletes may in fact be (somewhat) overweight
           | according to BMI yet still are unlikely to suffer from health
           | problems related to weight gain. An example would be ice
           | hockey players, a large proportion of whom probably have a
           | BMI in the overweight range but who are very fit. A
           | relatively large proportion of their extra mass is muscle
           | compared to non-athletes.
           | 
           | This is probably the minority of athletes, though, so it
           | might be a fringe case rather than something that should be
           | taught as a norm. I also don't know how that relates to
           | COVID.
        
           | moftz wrote:
           | Terry Crews is 6'2" and 245lbs. That's an obese BMI at 30.6.
           | Does he look obese to you? Fat is heavy, muscle is even
           | heavier, both will cause your BMI to go up. Obviously most
           | people don't look like him so really the BMI figure kind of
           | stops being useful when you have significant muscle.
        
         | nradov wrote:
         | There are many different "athletic" body types. A distance
         | runner doesn't look like a rugby player. There are some
         | athletes in certain sports who have an "obese" BMI while
         | maintaining low body fat but those are a tiny fraction of the
         | population. (Most people underestimate their body fat
         | percentage.)
         | 
         | BMI is accurate enough for a general population risk screening
         | tool. We aren't dealing with precise numbers here anyway, just
         | approximate ranges with significant differences between the
         | results of various research studies.
         | 
         | On an individual level excess body fat is a critical risk
         | factor for COVID-19.
         | 
         | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7430889/
        
       | dTal wrote:
       | For an activity risk calculator, see the microCOVID project:
       | 
       | https://www.microcovid.org/
        
         | mikem170 wrote:
         | I'm curious what people think of these calculators. I wonder if
         | people are surprised by the numbers, given that news headlines
         | don't quantify the risk in detail. Also people may think
         | differently about the same numbers.
         | 
         | I made my own covid mortality calculations last April, and was
         | not scared off by my estimated odds, 1 in 350 per year. Using
         | the linked UK calculator my odds were far better than I had
         | estimated, about 1 in 16,000 per 90 days.
         | 
         | The activity calculator was interesting, also. I had heard that
         | mask-to-mask interactions were based on an hour of nearness
         | while indoors. I thought it to be an overreaction when people
         | would wear masks outside and cross the street to avoid passing
         | on the sidewalk.
         | 
         | So I looked up 10 people with no masks in a room, and it was a
         | 1 in 200 chance per hour of catching covid given the odds of
         | someone from my area being there who had it. Once again the
         | risk was not as high I as thought it would be.
         | 
         | I'm curious what others think of the numbers from these
         | calculators, especially those who find them alarming or
         | surprising.
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-17 21:02 UTC)