Jabbing with a sharp object — tolerated and not tolerated.

This is not about hyperdermic needles. Not another post about vaccines. This is about 2 movies I encountered last night, and the sharp objects involved — a surgical scalpel and a harpoon.

I began watching the 1950 movie — written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz — "No Way Out." Sidney Poitier plays a young doctor, working in a prison ward, and Richard Widmark is his no-good racist patient. It's unfolding well enough. Here are some early scenes...

... but then a tray of medical instruments is left right next to racist Widmark so that it's easy for him to grab a scalpel. I had to turn it off. I wouldn't subject myself to the cheap suspense of waiting for Widmark to whip out the scalpel and stab Sidney Poitier!

I switched to a different movie, "Terror in a Texas Town." This is a 1958 western that's of interest because it was written by Dalton Trumbo during the blacklist days, and it stars Sterling Hayden and Sebastian Cabot. But it's an absurd refuge from that scalpel, because it's absolutely no secret — it's shown in part at the beginning of the film — that in the final showdown between hero and villain, the hero is armed with a harpoon! Watch the ending here:

I watched that entire movie. All that harpoon action. The harpoon was displayed and described again and again. It's so weird that I wouldn't put up with the scalpel business, but I watched an entire movie that was about one man harpooning another man. Unlike Sidney Poitier's character, the harpoonee deserved skewering.

Now, you're probably thinking that the harpooned villain was played by Sebastian Cabot, a fat actor who always played a fat man. He was a villain — an evil capitalist — isn't a cartoonish capitalist always fat? He's fat, and a harpoon is displayed over and over again, and Sterling Hayden is getting more and more focused and determined. Cabot must be his "whale."

If you watch the clip, you know — spoiler alert — that guess is wrong. In fact, Sebastian Cabot filmed all his scenes inside a single room — a hotel room. He didn't attend his own shootouts. He hired people, while he remained ensconced indoors with copious room service food and a beautiful secretary. Luxurious for the character and low-budget for the filmmakers.

"Patients with underlying conditions were 12 times as likely to die of covid-19 as otherwise healthy people, CDC finds."

A WaPo headline, quoted along with substantial text from the article by my son John at Facebook, where I expressed surprise that the factor was so low and asked:

Did they count obesity as a "condition" when they did that calculation?

Then:

I looked at the CDC report, and I see it only counted "severe obesity (body mass index ≥40 kg/m2)" as a condition. I'm a 5'5" woman, and I would need to weigh more than 240 pounds — more than 100 pounds over normal weight — to enter that BMI range.

Obesity begins at a 30 BMI, which would be 180 pounds for my height. That's 60 pounds less than the weight the CDC counted as a "condition" when it did its calculation. It wouldn't be 12 times as likely but what? — 100 times? — if they'd included the merely obese. And what if they'd counted the overweight but not obese? That would go all the way down to 150 for my height. It would be useful to know, because we have some power over our own weight!

ADDED: My son questions my observation. The factor should be lower if they included less severe conditions. I agree with him. I'm thinking in terms of being less likely to die. When you're trying to figure out how dangerous the illness is to you, you consider how likely it is for a person in your condition to die if they get the disease. Perhaps it's the case that 99.9% of those who died of the disease were obese. Of course, that's not the same as saying if you get the disease and you're obese, you have a 99.9% chance of dying. But if the overall percentage of those who get the disease and die is 0.1%, then I'd like to know what's the percentage for those who get the disease but are not obese? Is it 0.01%? That would be extremely useful information! For one thing, it would give people something to do to protect themselves: lose weight. But also, it would show us who should continue the more extreme form of social distancing and who should feel free to get out and about.

"That seems to be more of this 'stuff has agency' trend that is going on. I did not do it, the gun just went off."

Says Todd in the comments to the post that talks — the post that talks! — about using the expression "release weight" instead of "lose weight."

It is NEVER ever MY fault. Stuff just happens, bad stuff anyway. Everyone owns the good stuff but bad stuff just happens.

In this case if the weight doesn't leave, well "it" chose to stay and it is NOT your fault!

But this made me think about the virus. It's just a thing. It has no mind. But we're encouraged to think of it as stuff with agency. Here's Trump, yesterday:

I view the invisible enemy as a war.... Hey, it’s killed more people than Pearl Harbor, and it’s killed more people than the World Trade Center. World Trade Center was close to 3,000. Well, we’re going to beat that by many times, unfortunately, so yeah, we view it as a war. This is a mobilization against the war. In many ways, it’s a tougher enemy. We do very well against the visible enemies. It’s the invisible enemy. This is an invisible enemy, but we’re doing a good job.

"Is it OK to rail against fat discrimination but still want to lose weight? Or does that make her part of the problem?"

"'I’ve had people question whether I truly love myself if I want to be thinner,' [said Anne Coleman, who weighs 200 pounds and considers herself to be 'body positive'].... 'I kind of feel stuck between people bashing me for having obesity and telling me I should lose weight, and the other half that says you should love yourself and that means you shouldn’t lose weight,' said Sarah Bramblette, 42, of Miami. 'I’m bad for wanting to lose weight, and I’m bad for not losing weight.'... Molly Carmel, 42, understands the conflict between wanting to be thinner and wanting to rebel against cultural norms. At her heaviest, she weighed 350. She lost 170 pounds from 'gastric bypass surgery and bulimia,' as she put it. Then she founded The Beacon Program, an eating disorder center in Manhattan. While she does weigh clients, she doesn’t let them see the number. 'I’m not saying to get into this skinny mini body... But when you’re eating in a way that’s supporting a really heavy body, it’s arguable that that’s self-love. When I weighed 325 pounds, I couldn’t get into the shower. My underwear stopped fitting. That girl deserves to release weight if she wants to, culture or no culture.'"

From "Fighting Fat Discrimination, but Still Wanting to Lose Weight/Is it OK to be 'body positive' while striving to be thinner?" (NYT).

That's an interesting expression: "release weight." It replaces "lose weight." It suggests the weight would like to go, and you're letting it, rather than that you're somehow oblivious and dropping it somewhere.

Is this language change being promoted? I'm not seeing much of it on the web, though I did find this article at a website called Wholistically You:

Years ago, my Wing Chun Sufi taught me that “we do not lose weight, we release weight”. At first I didn’t quite understand what he was saying, until he explained that whenever you lose something our instinctual nature as humans, is to find it or want it back. He went further to explain that if we truly wanted to lose something, or to give something up, then we needed to release it....

I adopted the language, understood the power behind what I was saying and watched as it manifested in my life, and in my lovely body. The results I have garnered have been life altering....

We do not achieve results. We garner them.

"Fat cells produce large amounts of a protein used by the coronavirus to infiltrate human cells, researchers have warned..."

"... pointing to a potential explanation for why obese people are more severely affected....  Fat cells in obese or diabetic patients produce higher amounts of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (Ace2) than those in other people. It is the protein that the coronavirus binds to in the bodies of infected people, they said.... [F]at might therefore 'serve as a viral reservoir.'"

The London Times reports on a study published in the journal Obesity.