CNN Report: Medical Fatphobia Could Undermine Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccine

A CNN article (that I will not link to here because it is such a dumpster fire of fatphobia) explains that fat people are often left out of drug trials, including for vaccines, and that we've known since at least 1985 that the vaccines produced through these trials can be less effective for fat people.

The article's conclusion (as evidenced by its headline): The existence of fat people will undermine the effectiveness of a vaccine for COVID-19.

This is just blatant fatphobia. They've known for 35 years that the current process of creating vaccines puts fat people's lives more at risk, but have done nothing to solve that problem. Now, when it could affect the lives of thin people, they are trying to pile the blame on fat people for existing.

The article notes that vaccines are also less effective on older people and so a protocol was developed to solve that problem. For fat people - nothing but a transfer of blame.

Fuck that. Fuck a bunch of that. Fuck all of that.

Medical weight stigma kills fat people and then blames us for our deaths. I've talked about it here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Now they are trying to blame us for the deaths of others because the vaccines they create fail us. Fatphobia is the problem, not fat people. They know we exist, they should start treating us with equality instead of with blatant disregard for our lives including a general policy that killing us is completely acceptable, including if it's just easier or more profitable.

The focus should be on creating a vaccine that works for people of all sizes, not making a thin people vaccine and then blaming fat people for its failure.

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Published by Ragen Chastain

Hi, I'm Ragen Chastain. Speaker, Writer, Dancer, Choreographer, Marathoner, Soon to be Iron-distance triathlete, Activist, Fat Person. View all posts by Ragen Chastain