“Always kvetch. That’s how anything ever gets done. In this case, that seems to be how the major electronic health records (EHR) software company Epic was convinced to finally provide quarterly updates on obesity and GLP-1 usage for over 100,000,000 (one hundred million) Americans.1 Now, we can finally resolve a little debate started by The Economist last year: Has America’s obesity rate been declining? The answer? Yes!

Epic has also been generous enough to supply us with quarterly data for 2021 onwards. Adjusting for seasonality in that period, we can see that the fall is continuing into 2026. This might inform us about the causes. Think about it: if the trend was being driven by a mass die-off from COVID, as some have proposed, for example, then that moment should’ve passed, but the trend is continuing. In fact, every quarter lately is lower than the corresponding one from the previous year.”

From Cremieux Recueil.