Despite being very different diseases, type 1 and 2 always seem to just to be lumped under "diabetes". This has been really frustrating when trying to understand my risk COVID-19 risk as a T1 diabetic.
For example, my state recently started reporting stats on pre-existing conditions among hospitalized COVID patients. Here's what that looks like. Diabetes seems to be the highest risk factor for being hospitalized with COVID in my state, but what does that actually mean for me? Presumably the majority of those are type 2, because that disease is much more common and has a higher rate of obesity. But without accurately differentiating between the two, I'm just left to guess.
It really does a disservice to both type 1 and type 2 diabetics. It also causes a lot of confusion among non diabetics, who can never seem to figure out which is which. It would be amazing if we moved towards giving one of them a completely distinct name (but I'm doubtful that'll ever happen)
EDIT: just to clarify, I'm not looking for advice on COVID. Just musing / ranting about an annoyance that existed way before the pandemic, and has just come to the surface again because of it.
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