Is it still a crisis when it has gone on....

No it isn't. COVID is now an endemic disease we must live with and make sure we are vaccinated against..

We came to France yesterday. We have copies of our COVID vaccination certificates on our phones. No more tests in either direction, no more passenger location forms and, except on public transport, no masks. Visiting home in France is again as it was before COVID.

I think Baggs was talking about obesity, not Covid.

We need a take away tax.

Oops my mistake. To me a crisis is of the moment, which COVID is no longer, and obesity never has been, just a growing problem.

Unless the obesity rate doubled in a few months or obese people suddenly started falling dead in the street or being smitten down with some fell critical disease that meant a suddenly truncated life, it would not be a crisis.

It is a major societal problem, not helped by many government measures that are counter productive.

Now my little rant. One of the main problems seems to be that we eat too much sugar and expect our food to be very sweet. Why then when the government introduced the sugar tax did it allow manufacturers to replace sugar in their products with sweeteners? These seem to have made many drinks taste even sweeter.

Surely manufacturers should have been told to reduce the sugar and sweetness in drinks, not add sweeteners, so that if customers still wanted very sweet drinks, they would have to pay extra for them? It would at least start paving a way to helping us wean ourselves off sugar.

I agree about the misuse of the word 'crisis'.
As for obesity - I've certainly seen it here. I think it's partly a substitute addiction for smoking. Which is less common now due to increased prices. We all need our props.

I read your covid crisis comments as naturally following what I'd said about the meaning of 'crisis', M0nica. The start of the pandemic was a crisis and covid no longer is. It has perhaps pushed one or two other things into crisis though.

So I agree that obesity is not a crisis and never has been. It has been increasing for a good number of years now and looks set to continue increasing for a while as we haven't found a good way to reduce it yet. Individuals may have and good for them but on the whole obesity is continuing to rise.