So strong is that fear among the very overweight that bariatric surgeries have seen a significant jump in demand. Bariatric surgery is a procedure performed on the stomach or intestines that causes weight loss.
What’s odd about this is that obesity is tied to many other serious ailments. They include heart disease, diabetes and, as some studies suggest, cancers of the breast, esophagus, pancreas and colon.
Yet it took COVID to scare so many into asking for a kind of surgery that often involves removing part of the stomach. And that requires a hospital stay at a time when hospitals are struggling with waves of coronavirus patients who could pass on the deadly disease.