>Look at the actual risk factor charts

Citations please, and I prefer data I can process rather than being shown limited pretty charts, especially by the CDC. The CDC is more of a propaganda machine than Joe Rogan in my book. Joe Rogan does not claim to be an expert; he actually says don't take his advice. He says he is a comedian and fight commentator and sometimes knucklehead. How is that propaganda? You can't legislate intelligence or censor to protect unintelligent people. I enjoy watching his show and I don't take it for more than a conversation between two people on interesting topics that leads me to look into it more if I am interested. Let people discuss and make mistakes, and let's learn in open dialogue, not curated 'wisdom' from experts. How many times has the narrative changed over the past two years on COVID origins (lab leak anyone?), masking, biodistribution of the spike protein, and now finally the CDC's reluctant recognition of natural immunity? On the other hand, the CDC operates from a position of implied authority and issues guidelines for things like masking and has not conducted one RCT study with thousands of employees working on COVID. They have not released data for fear of misinterpretation! They have withheld serology surveillance data. Why? It might show enough people already had COVID and ruin their girl scout cookie drive of mRNA vaccines. They ignored the very obvious robustness and effectiveness of natural immunity for over a year to carry forward the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" political slogan. That's propaganda. The CDC did not release data on booster shot effectiveness in 18–49-year-olds, only older people. Why? Think about it. They pushed vaccines for 5–11-year-old, while the rest of the world took more cautious steps with their young. Now, we find that the child vaccine drops to 12% effectiveness after 30 days! I am so glad I didn't rush my young ones to get it or buy into the CDC as my only source of information to help me make decisions for me and my children. They already had COVID along with me and my wife, so we'll stick with our natural immunity. I am 57 and was pretty fit until I gained a little weight, and COVID was like a flu without all the mucous for me. My kids had one night of fever and were out of it for a day, two most after it. I come from a working-class family, my wife is from the sawas (rice fields) of East Java, Indonesia, and my kids are trim and fit. There is not one mortality from COVID in my immediate family and peer group who've had COVID. I know this is anecdotal, but I like to sum it up like this: If you have trouble making a flight of stairs, you'll have trouble if you get COVID. The six-year-old girl who made headlines because she died of COVID was said to have no health issues by the media and her parents. The photo showed a young girl, poor soul, with three chins and obviously very overweight. How this gets overlooked or not included in the article is a disservice. It stirs up fear in parents and overlooks the obvious - propaganda.

> Diabetes doubles your death risk, as does every 5 years of age.

The older you are, the closer you are to the life expectancy for your category, even without COVID. And a man who is categorized as having died from COVID at age 78 or 80 is already past the 76.1 life expectancy for an American male. No natural immunity for that. Exercise helps, but only to a point. Meanwhile obesity can be turned around with diet, sleep, and exercise or activity. I lived in SE Asia for 6-plus years, just after SARS-CoV-1 and during the MERS breakout. Before that the word pandemic was used to speak of the obesity problem in America, which finally came to roost during COVID-19.

From just using a few risk calculators (here's one [1]) from reputable institutions and schools I am seeing almost equal risk for a fit 50-year-old (height: 6'-0", weight 178 lbs.) vs. a 20 year-old (same height, weight: 320 lbs.) and Type-2 diabetes with the 20-year-old slightly worse off. If it were simply the exponential math you posited, they should be several factors of risk apart, but they're not.

CNN and other media using the disparaging term, "horse medicine" for Ivermectin because a few people ripped off or bought the dose prepared for an animal vs. the prescribed dose for a human is blatant politics and propaganda. Ivermectin has a longer safety record, and up to recently, more doses given than the novel mRNA vaccines. An older study was discounted because they say it appeared to help people against COVID when it was due to making them healthier by deworming them. However, now there is a large study (drawn from a pool of 44 healthcare institutions and over 60 million patients from the U.S. to produce a controlled study) "There were a total of 1,761,060 possible COVID-19 patients based on ICD-10 diagnostic terms and confirmatory lab results.", showing it is more effective than the much more expensive Remdesivir[2]. Of course, Forbes headlines a contrary study, "Ivermectin Doesn’t Help Covid Patients, Study Finds" from Malaysia with only 500 subjects. Hmmm...who's the propagandist now?

I've also been told from doctor friends that because doctors are seeing an increasingly obese patient, they are not coding for obesity as much due to familiarity and moving the bar, and fear of shaming people or getting accused of it. I wonder when the CDC finally releases the data with age, comorbidities, ethnicity, serology surveillance, and COVID deaths and hospitalizations, instead of their single comparisons of Age and COVID mortality [3] for example, what data mungers will uncover.

[1] https://www.qcovid.org/Calculation/

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122...

[3] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...