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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. I'm Fraser Nelson.

Each week, we ask three of our writers to read their pieces out. This week, our columnist

Lano Schreiberer argues that the real determinant of coronavirus isn't race, it's obesity. And what makes people obese?

That, she says, is a very separate and difficult question. Simon Cooper, who's the founder of

Fishing Breaks, asks whether the return of beavers into England River is really something to be

celebrated. And Gary Peve looks at the downfall of Bulgaria where she was born

and asks why the European Union keeps backing its kleptocratic government.

First, Lionel Shriver.

In the UK's capital city, where do the fewest obese people live?

North London. The most? East London. The weight disparity between largely white and largely

immigrant residents might seem to concern race, but I will argue against the tide, as right now

everything is about race, that deep down, the fat differential isn't ethnic.

The American and British media have chided for months about higher COVID fatality rates

among minorities, and I've previously cast medical dubiety on the fashionable claim

that these patients are dying of racism.

Released last month, a statistically meticulous Columbia University study of some 7,000 cases

validates my skepticism. As the New York Times reported, the study did not find race or ethnicity

to be an independent risk factor. The researchers did find

extreme obesity to be a strong independent risk factor for worse outcomes. Indeed, when isolated

...