Neither are published papers in peer reviewed journals, we need to always treat everything with healthy skepticism. That obesity and bad covid outcomes happen is beyond any doubt, the interesting part for me in this paper is that they try to explain the mechanism for obesity itself being a problem, rather than say diabetes or atherosclerosis.
I guess my whole point was if they're trying to explain a mechanism, their sample size doesn't generalize to the population; even limiting it to the obese population. If anything they've shown, in their small cohort, that the hypothesis is worth further study.
Having spent a lot of time in academia before moving into biotech, I think this is a pilot study and they're fishing for more research funding. The way those funding mechanisms work, I tend to view manuscripts like this with a critical eye.
