Understanding why COVID-19 manifests itself in different ways around the world , making Spain, for example, the country with the highest percentage of deaths in the world , is a challenge.
There are certain factors, such as the age of the population, which repeatedly appears as one of the most important determinants. However, one of the largest studies of the infection in the United States suggests that obesity in patients was the most important factor , after age, in determining whether people should be admitted to hospital.
Obesity
With a substantially higher probability ratio than any cardiovascular or pulmonary disease, obesity has emerged as the most important "chronic" factor in hospitalizations in New York, one of the epicenters of the pandemic worldwide .
To reach this conclusion, Christopher M. Petrilli and his colleagues at the Grossman School, along with physicians from NYU’s Langone Health Center, studied the electronic patient records of 4,103 people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the system of New York City Health Between March 1 and April 2.
The decision tree , shown in the illustration above, refers to the statistical method that was used to analyze the patient data. A decision tree is a way of grouping members of a sample based on their shared characteristics.
In the decision tree , age is the initial determining factor, at the top of the tree, followed by obesity. Therefore, obesity is the most significant ‘chronic’ factor, age aside. The authors had to make decisions about the divisions in the data at different branch points in the tree. For example, there are two categories for age just below obesity, one is ‘Age 20-44’ and another is ‘Age> 35’.
With much higher obesity rates in the United States than affected countries like South Korea and China, your health and economic performance could be far worse .