Fat chance

A healthy 32-year-old man from Liverpool, England, was offered a Covid vaccination last week, because in his NHS files he was recorded as being 6.2cm tall – and morbidly obese.

Liam Thorp, who is in fact 6ft 2ins (188cm), and weighs 17.5 stone (111kg), said he had been surprised to be offered the jab months ahead of schedule. So he checked with his local GP surgery, and discovered that as a result of being listed as only two inches tall, officials mistakenly believed he had a Body Mass Index of 28,000 – or around 1,000 times the UK average.

The Week, 27 Feb 2021

BMI chart

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Questions:

a) Do you keep track of your weight, or your BMI?

b) Do you think more people have a high BMI these days? Why might this be?