TWO SLATES IN ONE:

● Shot: I’m a Little Bummed That Adele Lost Weight.

She has been skinny for a while—first, in an Instagram post last year, and then, while hosting Saturday Night Live. This week, we got skinny Adele in a music video, ahead of the release of her album 30.

Many, many media outlets and random internet commenters have celebrated Adele for becoming skinny. This has been met with a very specific form of backlash, which goes something like “Adele is a megatalent whose music is worth blasting on repeat no matter the singer’s size. Please stop treating this as an accomplishment.” The backlash is correct.

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But I have been thinking about this all week. The thing is that Adele had a body type that is not really frequently represented in the world of megacelebrity that she occupies. And partly for that reason, I think it is OK to be disappointed that Adele lost a ton of weight.

— Slate, Friday.

● Chaser: Why Obese People Should Get COVID-19 Vaccine Priority.

Prioritizing folks with obesity makes a lot of sense from a purely clinical perspective. Obesity in COVID patients is associated with higher death rates and higher rates of hospital admissions to the ICU. On balance, we know these patients tend to spend more time on ventilators than those with lower BMIs. This is in part because obesity is associated with a host of other diseases, like diabetes and high blood pressure, that put patients at higher risk for COVID-19. But even the biology of obesity facilitates particularly dangerous infections, through SARS-CoV-2’s ability to proliferate in fat cells armed with specific receptors. The National Academies plan isn’t the only one that recognizes the need for people with obesity to get a vaccine quickly; Great Britain’s plan puts people with morbid obesity toward the front of the line, too.

— Slate, November 30th, 2020.

Slate is owned by the Graham Holdings Company, which previously owned the Washington Post, until selling it to Jeff Bezos in 2013.