We know that comorbidities play a huge role in covid hospitalizations, obesity being a main comorbidity.

Looking at Dallas county covid hospital data, 17% of hospitalized covid patients are obese.

Meanwhile, 34% of Texas residents are obese.

Therefore, if obesity is a risk factor for covid hospitalization, wouldn't we expect the obesity rate among hospitalized covid patients to be at least 34%, if not higher?

This may be just more of a statistics question than anything else... just a point of curiosity. Can anyone help me here??

It may be a question of how obese. Are both datasets using the same BMI as the cutoff? Or does the risk only increase above a certain BMI?

According to the CDC....
Obesity is frequently subdivided into categories:

• Class 1: BMI of 30 to < 35
• Class 2: BMI of 35 to < 40
• Class 3: BMI of 40 or higher. Class 3 obesity is sometimes categorized as "extreme" or "severe" obesity.

So, this observation does make one wonder if the high risk for obesity begins at Class 1, Class 2, or Class 3.

This might just be a data collection issue. 30% diabetes indicates that the patient population probably has a higher rate of obesity than just 17%. Likely their data collection is looking at the problem lists inputted into the EMR, so if treating physician didn't list obesity under their past medical history or problem list, then the patient would not be listed as obese in this dataset.