How Fatphobia Is Leading to Poor Care in the Pandemic
Weight stigma in health care can impact the care people get for Covid-19
On October 24, Amanda Martinez Beck of Longview, Texas, told her husband: “You need to take me to the ER.” Their whole family had tested positive for Covid-19 a week earlier — Beck’s husband, Zachary, is an English professor and their best guess is that he brought the virus home from campus, or that Beck picked it up at the community pool where she sometimes swims. Within a few days, Zachary and their four children were all on the mend. But despite prescription albuterol, steroids, and antibiotics, Beck was still coughing and sleeping in a recliner at night because staying upright made it easier to breathe. Around 10 a.m. that Saturday morning, her blood oxygen level was just 92%. (A healthy adult should measure close to 100.) Beck packed a bag and Zachary drove her to their nearest emergency room. He couldn’t stay; the Becks’ children are ages four, five, seven, and eight, and they couldn’t call a babysitter since the family was still in quarantine. So Beck kissed them all goodbye, trying not to panic. “My husband thought he was never going to see me again,” she says now.
Beck had another fear underlying her anxiety about her Covid-19 prognosis: Would she, a fat activist and author of Lovely: How I Learned…
