thank you. you're watching d.w. news live from berlin our coverage 19 special is up next in just a moment i'm also in berlin thanks for. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection been developing what does the latest research say. information and context the coronavirus update 19 special. on t w. d t you know that 77 percent. are younger than 65. that's me and me and you. and you know what it's time all voices part.

of the 77 percent we talked bobbie. this is where. the 77 percent this weekend on d w. staying at home during a lockdown with much time to eat and little movement at the same time no wonder that many people all over the world have gained weight during the pandemic and what it is quite a stretch from too much comfort eating too straightforward gluttony too much body fat is bad for our health. in fact those additional pounds can increase our risk of severe illness from 19. overweight

and our. care is our good friend. excess weight has always been a health risk in times of a coronavirus pandemic could be lethal. welcome to our special. good to have you with us now then when it rains it pours it's the perfect overweight and obese people these days they already have enough health worries as it is and now a tiny virus is adding to their plight putting them into the same risk category as the elderly and especially vulnerable. dr marcus riser heads the covert 19 unit here in clinical test a hospital in western germany most of the serious cases they've seen here during the pandemic are elderly patients as well as another high risk group. is

that patients who are overweight especially those who are morbidly obese have worse outcomes in this infection they're more likely to need intensive care. studies and several countries have shown a link between excess weight. and she survived the. action in early march 1st she developed a sudden fever and a dry cough a few days later she tested positive. i was in the hospital and they told me i was a risk patient and that it could end fatally. 2 years earlier she had been diagnosed with diabetes to get the disease under control she changed her diet and lost a lot of weight she's convinced that helped her to get through the covert 19 infection relatively easily. if coated 19 had appeared a year earlier than it did i don't think it would have ended that well for me. with poorly managed diabetes and high blood pressure and much more excess weight than

now 35 kilograms i think that would have finished me off. going to. obesity has become a global phenomenon it's usually expressed using the body mass index. which is the ratio of a person's body weight in kilograms to the square of their height and meters. a b.m.i. of 20 to 25 is considered a healthy weight 25 to 30 overweight 30 to 40 is classified as obese with over 40 severely obese. we don't just have a covert pandemic we have an obesity pandemic all around the world and in germany. at clinic on fast specialized obesity center martin boozing is a buriat trick surgeon he can hardly keep up with the many obese people seeking gastric bypass surgery and other weight loss procedures in germany their numbers

are climbing at the moment more than 2000000 people in the country would qualify for this kind of surgery with a b.m.i. of over 41. people from. severe obesity goes hand in hand with a number of other conditions including diabetes respiratory problems cardiovascular diseases doctor abusing puts this development only down to poor dietary habits and over consumption of sugary drinks. what i see again and again in overweight patients is that they simply can't drink plain unflavored water soda water or tap water they always need some kind of sweetener in it it's developed into a kind of addiction and. better prevention can help but when it comes to health systems often fail and the food industry has a powerful interest in the nutritional agenda both these problems explain why the doctors here continue to battle to pandemics covert 19 and obesity.

now for more i'm joined by susan jep nutrition scientist and. professor of diet and population health at the university of oxford skip to have you with us. let me start straight away with the way our report ended it mentions there that we're battling to pandemics obesity and covert 19 which you could agree. i absolutely words i mean in the ukraine a rare place agree in the south situation that we've had it for 70000 deaths from it that's all for it attracts headlines every single day but the fact is there's around $60000.00 people's deaths are attributable to obesity every single year this is obesity is a problem which has been with us the decades and shows no sign of going away there is no vaccine for obesity right so it has been

a big problem even before the pandemic however now with the pandemic it seems to be excessive bated and you've conducted a study involving 7000000 people looking at the connection between obesity and kovi 900 what are your findings. well some colleagues have a contrasting data set reach drools some data from primary cat health records electronic health records social anonymized we have seen these people who do have data about their weight and about whether they have heart or positive test where they've been damaged well spoken sorry all we were able to look at was the relationship between people's b.m.i. deputy mass index of measure their weight status and the likelihood of going into hospital or being admitted to intensive care or dying from catered to and what we saw was that there was a striking association with the if you like some of the air around comes from kate

in particular admissions to intensive care so for people with the body mass index of the level that we say people have clinical obesity actually your chances of going into intensive care are about to marry times grace and then somebody read a healthy weight by the time you are 40 it's a the 6 times higher now you don't have the problem the problem is to a large extent a lot of people on the web. suddenly not aware of their b.m.i. on that they are viewed as at obese and at such a risk. well many people might not consider themselves to be living with obesity but i think many many people are aware that they're a bit heavy at impacts is good for their health the problem is that we've struggled to convert that sort of you know general understanding that weight supports the problem into a real sense of the need to act and what task to start to do is make us

really recognize that obesity isn't just about how really actually the really important issue is the fact it has on our health and obesity that every single organ system of the body says we know it leads to more diabetes my heart to see these many different cancers are increased people have problems with the joints there's a whole raft of ill health that goes with obesity so it's perhaps not so very surprising that this extra strain that being overweight rates on your body also increases your risk from casement and of course we hear all the time that we have to protect the elderly and the vulnerable but nobody ever talks about protecting the overweight to the obese what can we do about that or we need to recognize that being severely overweight creates real don't rebel or c.

and so i think we need to kind of at least one list of people who need extra take extra care during the term. right susan jeff the nutrition scientist and professor on diet and population health at the university of oxford thank you so much thank you. and before you step on your scale at home now to check if you've gained a few pounds too many let's bring in another aspect of this pandemic faience and its ability to solve problems time for your questions and a science correspondent derrick williams. covered vaccines work could the research help developers create that seems for the common cold could cover 19 lead to a huge step forward in this area i love questions like this because they don't involve where we are now which in europe at least often feels like a pretty dire place but instead they look forward to the end of the pandemic and they ask whether all the misery might lead to anything positive but while it's

possible that the vast numbers of research projects being driven by covert 19 could lead to breakthroughs in fighting coronaviruses as a whole there's still a lot we don't understand about how they in general evolve and how they're transmitted what's called cross reactivity would certainly play a central role in research into any future offshoot of vaccines and that's when the weapons that your immune system produces to fight one virus might also work at least to some extent against other viruses that share similar characteristics some experts believe that cross reactivity from earlier infections with cold causing perona viruses in some people is influencing how badly they get coded 19 or or how easily they fight off the disease but we still don't know nearly enough about it

one promising avenue for example that could help in the development of future coronavirus that seems involves molech you are subhuman it's in the spikes those those proteins that stick out of their surfaces that allow. all of these viruses to tell latch on to cells and in fact them researchers have discovered that some of those areas look well conserved in all of the coronaviruses that infect humans there so they're quite similar across the group that's a great starting point for future work but but it's still just a starting point so so when you ask whether covert 19 could contribute in a big way to coronavirus research in general i'd say it already have those but i also don't think that will necessarily be enough to spawn vaccines in the near term for the corona viruses that cause colds though i'd be happy if that prediction

proved wrong. and they're equally as has so many morons says so do keep sending of questions just send an e-mail to feedback adult in your dot com type expert in the subject line 24 comment on our you tube channel that's all thanks for watching. and turn the conflict zone to him sebastian. china is roiling the west and europe along with the u.s. in many countries is pushing back hard cash issue a growing list of human rights concerns including hong kong's new security law my guest this week from the regime is one cool yallop wise whose country picking so many fights these days aware of a looming conflict. next month deal with the.

city has arrived in the middle of the colona pandemic. it's a disaster for the british health care system since qualified personnel from the 2 countries place an invaluable role in hospitals and nursing homes. now many are leaving britain for good leaving a massive void behind that. soup is under a. tin 60 minutes on d w. look closely. carefully. don't suit the needs to get.

discovered. subscribed. to. one thing that are trying to pick a fight so it's one country one system now isn't it and it was a cover up that not only right are right in the polls will cover up goes right through my system doesn't it china is roiling the west and europe along with the us in many countries is pushing back hard at issue a growing list of human rights concerns including hong kong's new security law my guest this week from beijing is one who yout government advisor who heads the think tank the center for china and globalization why is his country thinking so many

fights these days and where are they all meeting. i. talk to wang who go welcome to conflict zone thank you europe's getting fed up with beijing's threatening behavior and telling politicians here where they can go and who they can talk to telling the nobel prize committee who it can award and who it can't what made your government think it could push europe around like this what the 1st time for you to hear that but i don't think that that was the government position or there could be a misunderstanding or. you know there is a maybe there's a lack communication of whatever you know i. heard from you i don't hear anything from that. here in china i don't think so well perhaps you don't hear about it in china but just days ago the german foreign minister heiko master told beijing

bluntly to stop threatening europe after a senior czech politician have gone to taiwan and addressed its parliament you. the government had warned he'd pay a heavy price for his visit there that's bullying isn't it no i don't think that it was really probably stored in a rug i think that you know one china policy has been. hold and has been really maintained for the last. 4050 years and also it's a basis of china establish diplomatic ties with all the 'd countries that have east of america relation with china so so i think country publishers. really safeguard is one china policy and not having those official high level visit so i think it's a i can stand china is not happy and you know the they may be the

speaker may be reflect that. satisfaction so so i hope that. this is not it will be interpreted. as a china threat or anything souls or that is poverty a different operations what don't you when you may not like western politicians visiting taiwan or chinese nationals being awarded nobel prizes but that's your problem isn't it i mean these repeated attempts to impose your own prejudices and insecurities onto the international community ultimately doing you any good it's all are you it's counterproductive wow i think that probably a country has set about diplomatic ties with china i'm sure they go through the they've gone through the diplomatic establish in relation talks and they have actually already. paid by a certain principles on the guidance so if they recognise one china policy and then

that one china policy does not. you know also reflect the official contact. between the other country and taiwan and that should really be respected i think so if certain countries doing that china certainly has a right to. express their opinions as well i think that china just just expressed its satisfaction on its opinion so i think that should not be interpreted any more than that well if you intended a strong reaction if you intended a strong reaction from the european union you got it because it's foreign policy chief you don't have burrell codes china your government expansionist or thora tarion and the new empire that undermines international law did you really want to pick a fight with your largest export market one thing that china is the picking a fight always with china largest market no i mean it's probably both market the

for both those regions as well and as i said you know there are certain. guidelines and principles $11.00 country is the. diplomatic ties and the recognize one china policy and national. wire lated or bridged and if that is happen china certainly have a right to protest and the give. in the dissatisfaction and those so his comment i think that's that's fair fair you know that's not expansionist perhaps you're just too sensitive about free speech and free contacts because you don't exactly have a lot of it in china yourself do you know as well non-government think we don't understand lot of. probably the government policy so 'd we speak from non-government private think time point of view but you are

a government advisor who you are listed on your own facebook page as a government advisor you advise the government then we have would do otherwise i think that does does advices to of. course. but the we are not government we have not got the officials we advise in think time does otherwise people of course but when our government so so i'm not a common spokes person so so so if i knew if i think time understanding i could explain but some i don't know i so i cannot satisfy you of course so you are you telling me you are surprised that the kind of language that china uses these days when it's dealing with the west and dealing with other countries i mean we have big examples like your embassy in venezuela told those who talked about the china virus they told them to put on a face mask and shut up is that the kind of diplomatic language you think is a good idea for china to use these days well the situation you've been describing some of them haven't i haven't heard before but. i think that maybe there is

a contest or there or is there is china is also under a lot of attacks and. so i think we should really have a dialogue we should have come to the occasion of visiting i suddenly think that this pandemic has stopped. people to people exchanges and to stop the many visit and also many exchanges. between china and our cyber war so that's very unfortunate and i hope that. we should overcome that one and that is under control i think the government is doing its best and also we see that the visions of the visiting some countries to conduct exchanges of dialogue which is a great i mean we did that your foreign minister came to europe and he warned again last month about the consequences of giving awards to hong kong's pro-democracy movement if you're complaining about coercive diplomacy from washington on your

then you try practicing the same coercive diplomacy on europe that's hypocrisy is a. i think there could be some misunderstanding i think on the issue of hong kong certainly i think that. the hong kong young people have some legitimate concerns of the widening. gap between rich and poor and things like that so i think the chinese government has realized that it is so the they have launched this great baby project so there are many policies you shoot so the young people can come to you know a great brain ground an area to have a warrant to have a study to settle down there so the sort of that many years has been has been noted in the dressing that but on the other hand i don't think we need a chaotic hong kong where airports is a blog and. you know bystander were put on the gasolines and that's

just council was installed and smashed. shop and a lot of the wise counsel who expect what do you expect when china has been whittling away at the territories freedoms for some time now we've seen a crackdown on the people who led protests in 2014 we saw booksellers kidnapped and turning up strangely on the mainland because you didn't like the books that they were selling and now this new security law which has been condemned by many countries around the world as well as un human rights expert fact is this new law violates both the letter and the spirit of the basic law in hong kong and it was brought to you without any consultation so beijing now rules what i think the hong kong that is why that is why people are upset in hong kong. walk understand the situation but i think the hong kong also need stability and also order

and a more of course and a central government of course according to the basic law they have the right for defense the policy and security. all countries has a security law and china is no exception so i think that you can say now the hong kong the stock market is back and that they are now prepared for the largest i.p.o. in the war or divestment are back to hong kong and hong kong is got in business is back to normal gradually so i think that people will understand in the long run it's going to be really good for hong kong if we have these. peace and the prosperity and security return back to china or to hong kong of course but of course. there's always people more objectives once more accomplished more but it takes time you know in the graduate one british rule hong kong 400 years of the never give them any democracy so you can expect that. you

know very very so with china of course but i think you know the underlying come to when you haven't you haven't given hong kong stability with this new security law you've simply imposed a dictatorship and a police state the u.n. human rights experts who just written to your government aren't buying the stability argument what worries them in their words is that cut tail moment of freedoms of expression peaceful assembly and the société ssion and the interference with the ability of civil society organizations to perform their more full function and we've already seen that happening haven't we you talk about stability being coming back to hong kong and healthy markets since the new law came in dozens of keep pro-democracy figures have been detained including 2 lawmakers that's not support that's not stability that's a police state that you've imposed what you're sort of the. interpretations but i think that basically you know what happened in the u.s.

you know even present trouble than our law any violence or any vandal. issues or disorders so so the of course john is not perfect. there's no. perfect policy but you know probably china was forced to because you know china has to maintain. the stability and the law and order there and so that all the multinationals the companies can come back as not running away stock market can't can be rebuilt and confidence can return the largest i.p.o. in the world can happen so. nothing's perfect of course but this is not as it is not a way that is this is a long way from perfect dr wang isn't it i mean we've seen police or a number but even the u.s. we've seen pete police raiding we're not talking about the u.s. we're talking about hong kong here and beijing's as part of and we've seen that on

the mental freedoms turned into crimes by this new security law which you've introduced and the rest of the world did you think they wouldn't notice we had a joint statement last month from the governments of australia canada new zealand u.k. us saying the law was eroding hong kong's people hong kong's fundamental rights and liberties and you your answer to that is well nothing's perfect but the markets are doing well well what i'm saying is that hong kong as. a part of china as one country to assist you know they did that also it's one country one system now isn't it and. well let me let me finish you think keep interrupting me what i'm saying is that hong kong needs stability and of course. law as well because hong kong cannot be for the last 6789 months i mean there in the last year

hong kong is basically dysfunctional and it's paralyzed and been airport a bar. people were put on the oil to burn you know on the by standards and the letters goebbels thought no country in the world would allow that and then there's no people would have loved friends tell me that they don't feel security hunger anymore he's also i think you know an advantage doing something good you think going to when the people of hong kong would simply sit by and watch their freedoms erode and being eroded by beijing and not do anything about it. did you really think that then while you miscalculated bad all i think that. you know that you have or there certainly are people you hung on. you know have different opinions of course that is that is obvious by the but also you have to really think that one is the new national security establishment there's almost $3000000.00 you know voted. in favor of this law so so that is that is also

a fact that we should not exact but the but let let the time speak for itself let the market speak for ourselves let's let the people. you know there's only. 2 or 3 months from this low but let's take a longer view as you say we can see the long in fact what we see on the longer view we've already seen what that long view is going to look like because i pointed out you've dozens of pro-democracy figures have been detained not only that but police have raided the offices of apple daily one of the few news outlets that beijing doesn't control the paper's founder jimmy lai was arrested together with 8 of the men he was later released on bail but the damage is already being done freedoms are being torn up the basic law is being torn up and and you're having your new security law superimposed on top of it so we can see which way it is going and

people don't like that and if you think the rest of the world is going to sit by and just praise the markets you seem to have miscalculated don't you because that's not the attitude of the rest of the world. that's right and that i'm damaged china's respiration well that there was there was the there is no perfect solutions that definitely i think that. the power to raise them intended law and order and also the security i think after all hong kong you know where we're having no huge casualties. or life been lost in hong kong even though this whole year demonstration of violence going on so i think the government was required to quiet . reserved on that and what we see are the the us army where they have acquired a number of our casualties already so so i think we have to really take into consideration that this is one country 2 system is the new new system nobody does

it before nobody has done it before it's always have a lot of. you know trial and you know touching the stone cause in the river. so so we have to you know i mean improving this process but i think my problem the process if i admire holding back the order yeah you are proving the process by arresting pro-democracy figures trust in china as i mentioned a little while ago and is plummeting despite what's seen as your growing influence a survey by the bertelsmann foundation showed that in the 4 months up to may this year negative views of china have increased in several countries by double digits a clear majority now in the us fronts and germany now have adverse views about china's rise the highest figure being 61 percent in germany did you want your country to be so unpopular around the world i think that that's a problem of the perception of china. china is a negative and it's got in. in a more negative now but i think. on the part of both china and also our war i think

we really need to increase the communication for example china is doing for quite well on all those k p i in terms of if you measure the countries china become the 2nd largest economy in 4 decades china embrace the globalization china is the largest trade in asia was 130 countries you have a country and china and china is not one cent of china g.d.p. gross and china china is also leave 800000000 people out of property cutting 70 percent of the world poverty level so they have a contribution in almost a 2. the war but i think you know we need to really explain the well and then probably we need to have a better. look at china because i think also on the war you know the western country need a bit more tolerance of china if the chinese do while a lot like there is obvious of a dozen matters of white cat black cat as long as it catches my eyes with a contribution to the 31 3rd of the world g.d.p. gross you know never become a 'd. conqueror any. continent or countries or sending troops to other

countries or fighting you know that's like i want them to when you see example call for more tolerance example for example for my last dollar that's the french that. yeah but the but also you know in a 10 tolerance a 1000000 weakest locked up in riyadh so-called reeducation camps tolerance of persecution of christians is that the kind of tolerance that you're looking for from the outside no i don't i don't i don't i don't i don't think you interpret that right i think the tolerant china that they are from development model have a different path have a different system because we you know it was say or china didn't come virgin that china can't be you know we need them all a diversity of this world we can't just run fresh and we're not talking about a convergence diverging the world is complaining about your yeah human rights record continually and the locking up the incarceration of

a 1000000 weak is engine jang province this is what they're complaining about i think because of this you have a you know as far as. as far as i can see there are there is no hard evidence or proof or credible data to say that i mean there is cause china will start on it's been published around the world and chinese instructions to the people who stuff these incarceration camps it's been printed no matter where it's my published no i don't. read the west all i mean there's a there's a. there's a white paper published by the chinese government they were saying all the people in there is a jerk asian in our school who has been graduated already and you know and also to prevent you know you know 510 years ago there was a plague by the terrorist attacks all band of hundreds of 1000 lives were lost dr wang perhaps you'd agree that one of the main causes of the rest of the world

losing trust in china was your handling of the corona virus outbreak in wu han at the beginning of the year and the shocking way in which local officials in will have tried to silence the one doctor who sounded the alarm i wonder what it says about your society that when officials of the communist party are faced with bad news their 1st response is to try to cover it up that tactic lost both you and the rest of the world valuable time in dealing with this pandemic didn't. and you're sued or have all the very negative a question but but what i tried as well is that i think that you know the coven died when they 1st discovered what han. chinese authorities as the report that to the show as a report out of the united states and all the other countries of course the doctors that who was of find the disease at the very beginning but but you know this is a disease never never happened in the history of mankind nobody knows about that

and then you should not send a false alarm as well you should really be proven and tested and they're also very 5 by x. per that is really a deadly lethal disease and if that is actually was that they reach that point where they come to the conclusion they are in the middle of a shutdown a $10000000.00 people city they immediately shut down 6 the bill in the province they actually you know at the chinle now it's doing the best there's no single case of current locally on a daily basis for the last a month or 2 so so in general when it's done right well i'm not trying hard i know you are ignore the fact that dr lee when youn lee when down when he 1st talked about the emergence of a viral outbreak he was coded into the police to the public security bureau accused of making false statement the severely disturbed the social order and he was and it a letter which read we solemnly warn you if you keep being stubborn with such

impertinence and continue this illegal activity you'll be brought to justice do you understand he had to write i do underneath the law absolutely right you are right you know this is what happened this is what happened it was a cover up that not only runs also cover up goes right through his system doesn't it. you have your interpretations but of what i see is actually you know the officer who who talked to. the un has been sacked has been punished and though there's a number of officials the in the party secretary has been residing at the hospital chief has resigned there is a there's a number of cases has been handled the by the local government i think there could be local officials somewhere that didn't want to tell the bad news maybe about we had some initial pressures but but later on i think one that got them to realize this is a deadly disease there was no time to do you should the warriors the lock down the

cities which is never done so in the history of mankind to have a 60000000000 province locked down for its 2 story months so they paid the price they have also experiment old ways of how to account come pain and the count come back this disease quarantine the social distance you know and massive testing and you know they experiment all those methodology and now is widely practiced internationally so so i think china should give some credit for for 5 years but given what you haven't given me that they're even the i mean if you get them for a given the initial cover ups and you have a u.s. intelligence report in june saying that even a senior politicians in beijing were scrambling to get accurate data from officials local officials they themselves still played a role in obscuring the outbreak by keeping information back from the world health organization so i ask you will we ever discover the real truth about what beijing knew and when it knew it will we ever discover that while we we have to think to

a level we don't know all the details but what are we seeing you know from from our angle from the same time point to look at these you know you know the cases in han is only a very initial i mean probably a week or 2 they were little be done you know find of the real cause of the disease and then we really to make a right announcement to the world at the beginning nobody would know this is that lee this is going to be the pandemic this is going to those swept the world nobody knows about that so so they have to be careful in. cleanin it's such a at that with these it's also i think the beginning there's a little little phrase i patiently did a little. contemplating understand that but once they have all the doctors have to prove that this is a bad business there was no plan to lock down the whole city and shot all the flies or i did all the things right things or all so so i mean. everything's perfect dr wang we out we run out of the time thank you very much for being on conflict so

thank you. to the bouquet. cut. cut cut cut cut. cut. cut cut cut cut cut cut. cut cut.

cut. cut cut. cut. cut. cut. cut. thank. you absent. of the cuts. it's a disaster for the british health care system since qualified personnel from d.-u. countries plays an invaluable role in hospitals and nursing homes. now many are needing britain for good leaving a massive void behind that. smoke is under. 30 minutes on d. w. . your city or health care is

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language no nothing this keeps me they took me to entrap words to say you want to their story influence your fighting and reliable information for margaret. this is news and this is our top story in the u.s. hundreds of donald trump's supporters have stormed the capitol building in washington protesters entered the chamber where lawmakers had been meeting to certify joe biden's election victory the main force filmmakers to take cover as police try to remove the demonstrators congress went into an emergency recess but the members have reconvened to finish the certification process police have since secured the.