Standstill nation: America was getting up — then the pandemic sat us back down
COVID lockdowns in New York City meant that going to see friends or play basketball with them in the park was out of the question. 'I really wasn't getting much activity because we couldn't go outside, and the house I was living in was pretty much packed to the brim, so it was hard to even move around there,' says Washington, who was 14 at the time. 'Every day I'd wake up super sluggish, and I just wanted to lay in bed,' he says. With him stuck at home, Washington's physical activity dropped to nearly zero. He was 'borderline depressed' and eating lots of sweets to cope. Over the next year and a half, his weight rose to more than 300 pounds.
Washington is among many children, adolescents and adults whose activity levels dropped precipitously when the world effectively shut down. Between 2013 and March of 2020, the average amount of time Americans spent sitting was actually falling, decreasing by more than an hour, according to a recent JAMA research letter. And the share of the U.S. population spending six or more hours sedentary fell from nearly 55% to just over 35%. But the pandemic stopped the trend in its proverbial tracks.
It's now been over five years since the pandemic put the world — and us — on pause. Gyms and parks are open again, but some vestiges of that time, like Zoom school and grocery delivery, never left. So where do things stand now? Are we on the move again or still stuck to the couch? We investigated.
Experts credit one phrase for much of the trend. In 2014, leading obesity expert Dr. James Levine dubbed sitting 'the new smoking' in a research paper and then a book. He hypothesized that, with smoking prevalence down dramatically, sitting was now killing more people.
Being too sedentary for too long raises risks for some of the most common life-threatening diseases in the U.S., including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, certain cancers and death from any cause. So Levine's phrase comparing sitting to smoking got a lot of attention from the press and from Americans themselves, Glenn Gaesser, professor of exercise physiology in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University, tells Yahoo.
But Gaesser and Bethany Barone Gibbs, an epidemiologist who studies physical activity, are not entirely convinced that that attention actually translated to action. Because the subjects of the JAMA study documented their own sedentary time (rather than it being tracked by smartphone or another more accurate device), the experts wonder if the decline in sitting time was real. 'It could hopefully reflect a true population in what people were doing, but at the very least it might reflect an awareness that too much sitting is not good for [people],' driving them to report fewer hours spent sitting on their couch.
According to the JAMA report, the average number of hours Americans spent sitting each day stayed about the same even after the world began to reopen. During the period between 2017 and 2020, people were spending 5.9 hours a day sedentary. 'I'm not surprised at all to see that the [declining sedentary time] trend did not continue after the pandemic,' says Barone Gibbs. 'During the initial lockdown period, there was just nothing to do; people couldn't leave their home and sat around a lot.'
It's hardly surprising that activity decreased amid lockdowns. But by July 2021, the majority of the country was open with few restrictions, according to the New York Times. By April 2023, the national state of emergency due to COVID was officially declared over. Yet from 2021 to 2023, the amount of time Americans were sedentary remained stable at six hours, the JAMA report suggests. 'I think there have been some behavioral changes in the way that we do things and some technological advances, during work and leisure time, that are contributing to more sitting,' says Barone Gibbs. Zoom school and meetings were the new normal amid lockdowns, but they have stayed the norm for some students — especially those in college and higher education — and white-collar workers. Spending on food delivery shot up amid the pandemic and never fell back down. Office commutes and grocery trips that once represented opportunities for incidental exercise became unnecessary inconveniences, notes Barone Gibbs. It wasn't so much the pandemic but the technology, which became prevalent during lockdowns, that has changed our sitting habits and physical activity, she suspects.
There isn't much data about physical activity or sedentary time after 2023 yet. But neither Gaesser nor Barone Gibbs think much has changed since. 'Getting the average time spent sitting below six hours 'is probably not going to be achievable,' says Gaesser. 'We live in a sedentary society where most people's jobs [involve] a lot of sitting.'
However, there are some promising signs that people may be getting back to more active lifestyles. In 2024, a record 25% of Americans ages 6 and older belonged to gyms, health clubs or fitness studios, according to data from the Health & Fitness Association. But there's a wrinkle to that good news, says Barone Gibbs: The people who can afford those memberships aren't the ones most at risk of the health problems associated with too much sedentary time. 'The people we're really worried about are the ones who are lower income and don't have flexibility in their job [to find time to work out]; they don't have that kind of luxury,' says Barone Gibbs.
It's ultimately a highly personal question. For Washington, it was a personal tragedy that spurred him to change course. Washington's father had multiple health issues, including stomach cancer, high blood pressure and diabetes, he says. When his father died in November 2022, 'it was a wake-up call,' Washington says. 'He had a lot of health problems, and considering my own weight and that I had high blood pressure at the time, I felt like something had to change.'
Washington started educating himself about better nutrition. He quit sugar and fatty foods 'cold turkey,' and started hitting the gym two or three times a week, eventually increasing his workouts to six or seven times a week. In less than two years, Washington was down to 180 pounds. 'It was really hard considering that I didn't have many examples when it came to losing weight,' he says. 'After a while, you're able to grasp that fact that you're bettering yourself; once you're ingesting good food and moving around feeling your heart pumping, your sweat dripping and knowing the [excess] fat is slipping away — that's the motivation and the goal.'
Experts say it doesn't necessarily take a life-altering event to get moving, but it's important to find your individual motivation and the activities that work for you. For starters, both Barone Gibbs and Gaesser point out that it's not just about sitting less but a matter of moving more. 'If you have a person that is a couch potato and doesn't do any physical activity and you ask what would improve the health of that person: Sit an hour less a day, or increase physical activity to meet the minimum; there's no question that they would have much bigger benefits from physical activity,' Gaesser says.
So rather than opt for a standing desk, try to incorporate daily walks into your routine. You don't have to start living at the gym — in fact it's probably more sustainable (and affordable) to just add movement to your day-to-day life, such as walking. Or try taking short breaks from work to do some "exercise snacks." Or maybe you want to unsubscribe from your grocery delivery service and start going to the grocery store. 'Figure out ways to make walking purposeful and meaningful and find ways to get more movement in across the day,' says Barone Gibbs.
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Transcript: Dr. Mehmet Oz on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Aug. 3, 2025
The following is the transcript of an interview with Dr. Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Aug. 3, 2025. MARGARET BRENNAN: Change is coming for the country's Medicaid system as part of the enactment of the Big, Beautiful Bill. To help us understand what's ahead, we turn now to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz. Good morning. Welcome to Face The Nation. DR. MEHMET OZ: Thank you. MARGARET BRENNAN: You've got a lot of work ahead. I want to start on drug costs. The president put this 25% tariff on India, big drug producer. The President's trade deal with the EU puts a 15 percent tariff on imported medicines from Europe. How do you stop the drug makers from passing along those costs to people on Medicare and Medicaid? DR. MEHMET OZ: Well, the president's letter on Thursday for most favored nation pricing is a good example of that, and he's been working on this tirelessly since the first administration. And just to put this in context for many of the viewers, about two thirds of bankruptcies in America are caused by health care expenses. About a third of people when they go to the pharmacy, they leave empty handed. They can't afford the medication. So the President has said, Enough global freeloading. We've been covering much of the development costs for new drugs to cure cancer, deal with lots of other illnesses that are life threatening. It is in time for the American public to understand that we should not be paying three times more for the exact same medication in the same box, made in the same factories. The president's saying, equalize it out. Let's use a model that's worked, for example, for external threats, that's what NATO did. Everyone has to pay a little more. We'll pay extra too, but we won't pay a lot more than everybody else, so they actually have to raise their contributions, in this case, to an internal threat, which is illness. We'll pay a little less than America that way more Americans can afford these medications, and it's a fair system for the entire globe. MARGARET BRENNAN: So this was declared in these letters that were sent out to 17 pharmaceutical companies this past week, and it calls for extending that to Medicaid drug prices. Is that intended to offset what will be, you know, cuts to Medicaid? And do you know, you know, if the companies are actually going to follow through on this, like, how do you actually strong arm them into doing it? DR. OZ: Well just get the numbers correct. We're putting 200 billion more dollars into Medicaid. So we're actually investing— MARGARET BRENNAN: —by the time when costs are going up, so. DR. OZ: Costs are going up, but there's been a 50 percent increase in the cost of Medicaid over the last five years. So I'm trying to save this beautiful program, this noble effort, to help folks giving them a hand up. And as you probably gather, if Medicaid isn't able to take care of the people for whom it was designed, the young children, the dawn of their life, those are the twilight of their life, the seniors and those who are disabled living in the shadows, as Hubert Humphrey said, then we're not satisfying the fundamental obligation of a moral government. And this President has said over and over that he believes that it is the wise thing and the noble thing to help those who are vulnerable and every great society does that, we're going to as well. So we're going to invest in Medicaid as is required, but we want an appropriate return on that investment. One thing that Medicaid patients should not face are drug prices they can't afford. MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, how do you enforce this? Pharmaceutical companies— DR. OZ: Well, the pharmaceutical companies, if you sit them down quietly, Margaret, and we've done that, and say you went into this business at some point, because you cared about people. I know there's many out there shaking their heads, but that is actually the truth. People go into health care, whether they're pharmaceutical companies or insurance companies or the PBMs or anybody in the space. Even at the CMS, the most impressive thing to me in my new task, and the President has appointed me to, is the remarkable quality of people within the organization, just unbelievably talented. They went into this job because they care about health care and about people. Somewhere along the lines, people forget. They put numbers ahead of patients. And when that happens, then you start running into problems. We went to the pharmaceutical companies and we said, you appreciate this is not a fair system. We should not be paying more in America, three times more, for your products than you charge in Europe. They get the joke. They understand the reality of this problem. They are engaging with us. We're in the middle of those negotiations. The President has a unique power to convene. We've done it with dealing with prior authorization, this heinous process where patients feel like they're trying to get care from a doctor. Everything's being done except all of a sudden the arm of insurance comes in and stops the whole process for unknown reasons for weeks, sometimes months. The insurance companies, representing 80 percent of the American public, got together and they said, because we pushed them, we're going to deal with this. We can do the same, I believe, with the pharmaceutical industry, with most favored nation pricing. MARGARET BRENNAN: Let me ask you about the changes that are coming because of this new law to Medicaid, which is jointly administered between the feds and the states. There are major reduction- reductions to federal health care spending here, one of the changes are these work requirements. It's about 20 hours a week, volunteer or work to qualify for health care. What is the guidance you are giving to states on how to implement this? Because in this economy, things are more complicated. Uber driver, independent contractor, how do they show they work their 20 hours a week? DR. OZ: Last weekend, I was at the National Governors Association with Secretary Kennedy, who has been a big advocate of work as well. Every Democratic president and Republican president has said that the foundation of a healthy welfare system of a social system of support is work. MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, but I'm asking how you actually implement that and register it so that people who are working do qualify, and they don't get caught up in paperwork because they didn't file something on time. DR. OZ: As long as we're okay that people should work and would want to work, and it's not just work, it's community engagement. They can go get educated, right? They can take care of family members. They can contribute in other ways, but work is a great way of doing and get you out of poverty if you can find jobs and elevate yourself. There have been efforts to do this in the past, but they haven't been able to achieve what we can achieve, because we have technologies now. And we've invested already, as soon as the bill was signed, began pilots to try to demonstrate that we can actually do this correctly. We have pilots now in Louisiana and in Arizona, in both cases, within seven minutes, you can click on where you're working. You mentioned Uber, you're an Uber driver. You click that button on your phone. It just takes you to your payroll provider. Let's say it's ADP. We then ask your permission, can we connect with this payroll provider to demonstrate what you've actually been able to work and earn over the past month? This also, by the way, confirms your eligibility. But there's a bigger benefit here. Once you do that, you're in, you're done. However, what if we take one step further, Margaret? What if we go beyond just proving that you tried the work to actually say, You know what, you didn't work enough, but we can actually help you by connecting you through an employment office? MARGARET BRENNAN: So you're still figuring out the technology, but isn't there an end-of-December deadline for a lot of these things to be figured out? And how do you make sure that people don't get kicked off? Because in the state of Georgia, which already had work requirements, they have really struggled to make this work. DR. OZ: Well, a couple of things. It's not the end of December, it's end of December a year from now, and Georgia is apples and oranges. Georgia had a program only for people under the poverty level, and for those people, if they wanted, they could elect to come into a system to help them get jobs. There have been 50,000 reduction in head count of uninsured people in the overall program in the last five years. Overall, Georgia, 2 million less uninsured people. So Georgia is using a lot of tactics, and they're going in the right direction. I would argue that if you have confidence in the American people and their desire to take to offer to try to get a job, if we challenge you to that. And remember, if you're an able-bodied person on Medicaid, you're spending 6.1 hours watching television or leisure time, so you don't want that— MARGARET BRENNAN: —Well, KFF Health Policy found 92 percent of adult Medicaid recipients already are working. Or they have the carve out because they have to have caregivers, or they have to do other things. DR. OZ: They're fine. All they have to do is there'll be a simple app. If you've already carved out, that's super simple. If you're supposed to be if you're able-bodied and supposed to be working, we want to help connect you to the job market and get you into work. We have twice as many jobs available in America as people who seem to want them. The foundation of work is not just about fulfilling eligibility. The goal of health care insurance is to catalyze action in the right direction, to get you healthier, to give you agency over your future, so you recognize you matter, and you should have a job, therefore to go out and change the world. MARGARET BRENNAN: So there's a drug addiction problem in this country. How are those changes going to impact people who are on Medicaid in states like Kentucky, in states like West Virginia? DR. OZ: In many instances, there are carve outs for folks who have substance use disorder problems. There are programs-- MARGARET BRENNAN: —How do they prove that? ADMINISTRATOR OZ: Well, they can— MARGARET BRENNAN: Is this in the app? DR. OZ: Yes, it will be in the app. The app, again, this is being developed by the United States Digital Service, led by Amy Gleason, who is a wonderful technologist. She and I were with the President and Secretary Kennedy and the head of the czar for AI in this country on Wednesday, talking about overall how we're going to change the use of health technology in America. We've got to get into 2025 with health technology, as is true in every other sector. If you're watching the show right now, you could also be streaming media. You could take an Uber somewhere, the rideshare. You could do an Airbnb. Technology should make the system more efficient. We should have confidence that it will also allow us to do what we all agree is possible. If the whole challenge to a work requirement is that you don't have confidence in our ability to accomplish it, that's a separate question, because I do have confidence in the American people, and we have confidence we can pull this off. Look at the passport system, Margaret. Right now, you can go and get a passport in two weeks without having to go to the post office, send pictures, and all that's gone. It's fixable. Let's use technology. MARGARET BRENNAN: I'm still confused on how someone who is in the throes of substance abuse is going to use an app to say, I'm in the throes of substance abuse every week, to file on online— DR. OZ: —When they go in to get their help for their substance abuse treatment, assuming they're going for help on that, they can also get enrolled in, in those requirements, can be fulfilled. We want to talk to them in as many ways as possible. It's not going to happen just because we put an app out there, you, you have social workers and other folk elements who care a lot about this population, who are coming together, but they have to have some mechanism to report back. That just has not been done well. MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, and this is incredibly detailed, and that's why we wanted to have you on. I have so many more questions for you on rural hospitals and some of the other criticisms. I have to leave it there for now. But thank you, Dr. Oz-- DR. OZ: Can I give you 30 seconds on rural hospitals, because this is important. You have 7 percent of Medicaid money going to rural hospitals. We're putting 50 billion dollars the president wants us to, Congress wants to— MARGARET BRENNAN: There are a lot questions on how you're going to duel that out, and whether you have already made promises. Do you have any specifics for us? DR. OZ: Yes. Wait, wait, it's going to be, they'll get the applications in early September. The money is designed to help you with workforce development, right sizing the system and using technology to provide things like telehealth that can change the world. Imagine if we can change the way we think about the delivery of health and make it more about getting people healthy so they can thrive and flourish and be fully present in their own lives and as Americans. MARGARET BRENNAN: Dr Oz, we'll leave it there. We'll be back in a moment. Black swimmers teach others amid history of aquatic segregation How safe is our Social Security safety net? In Gaza, hunger forces impossible choices as Hamas releases propaganda video of hostage Solve the daily Crossword
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an hour ago
- Fox News
Dr. Oz touts investment in Medicaid: 'I'm trying to save this beautiful program'
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz says the Trump administration plans to invest more than $200 billion "more dollars" into Medicaid following the passage of the "One Big Beautiful Bill." "I'm trying to save this beautiful program, this noble effort, to help folks, giving them a hand up," Oz told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "And as you probably gather, if Medicaid isn't able to take care of the people for whom it was designed, the young children, the dawn of their life, those who are twilight of their lives, the seniors, and those who were disabled living in the shadows, as Hubert Humphrey said, then we're not satisfying the fundamental obligation of a moral government," he continued. Oz, the 17th administrator for CMS, said the government wants "an appropriate return" on the Medicaid investment. He addressed the difference in drug costs between the U.S. and Europe, adding that work is being done by the administration in an attempt to bring drug prices down. Last week, the Trump administration announced it is launching a new program that will allow Americans to share personal health data and medical records across health systems and apps run by private tech companies, promising that this will make it easier to access health records and monitor wellness. CMS will be in charge of maintaining the system, and officials have said patients will need to opt in for the sharing of their medical records and data, which will be kept secure. Those officials said patients will benefit from a system that lets them quickly call up their own records without the hallmark difficulties, such as requiring the use of fax machines to share documents, that have prevented them from doing so in the past. "We're going to have remarkable advances in how consumers can use their own records," Oz said during the White House event. CMS already has troves of information on more than 140 million Americans who enroll in Medicare and Medicaid. Earlier this month, the federal agency agreed to hand over its massive database, including home addresses, to deportation officials.
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
Needle-free vaccine method delivers antibodies through dental floss in early study
Dental floss could eventually do much more than improve oral hygiene. A new study led by Texas Tech University and the University of North Carolina suggests that the thin filament could eventually double as a vaccine mechanism. In animal models, the researchers showed that dental floss can effectively release vaccines through the tissue between the teeth and gums, according to a press release. In the study, the flossing technique triggered the production of antibodies in "mucosal surfaces," such as the lining of the nose and lungs, the release stated. The findings were published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering. "Mucosal surfaces are important, because they are a source of entry for pathogens, such as influenza and COVID," said co-author Harvinder Singh Gill, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University, in the release. With the traditional method of injecting vaccines, the antibodies are primarily produced in the bloodstream, he noted. "But we know that when a vaccine is given via the mucosal surface, antibodies are stimulated not only in the bloodstream, but also on mucosal surfaces," said Gill. "This improves the body's ability to prevent infection, because there is an additional line of antibody defense before a pathogen enters the body." The vaccine enters through the "junctional epithelium," which is a thin layer of tissue in the deep pocket between the tooth and the gum. This tissue doesn't have the same barrier as other tissue linings, which means it can release immune cells into the body. In the study, the researchers added a peptide flu vaccine to unwaxed dental floss before flossing the teeth of lab mice, according to the release. Next, they compared the effectiveness of the floss-delivered vaccine to techniques that delivered it nasally or orally. "It would be easy to administer, and it addresses concerns many people have about being vaccinated with needles." "We found that applying vaccine via the junctional epithelium produces a far superior antibody response on mucosal surfaces than the current gold standard for vaccinating via the oral cavity, which involves placing vaccine under the tongue," said first author Rohan Ingrole, a Ph.D. student at Texas Tech University. "The flossing technique also provides comparable protection against the flu virus as compared to the vaccine being given via the nasal epithelium." In addition to flu, the test was repeated for three other vaccine types: proteins, inactivated viruses and mRNA. For all types, the flossing technique produced "robust antibody responses in the bloodstream and across mucosal surfaces," the release stated. Next, the research team aims to test the effectiveness of vaccine delivery to the epithelial junction in humans through the use of floss picks, which are easier to hold. "It would be easy to administer, and it addresses concerns many people have about being vaccinated with needles," Gill said. "And we think this technique should be comparable in price to other vaccine delivery techniques." Hua Wang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois' Grainger College of Engineering, was not involved in the study but shared his reaction to the findings. "This study presents a promising floss-based vaccination method that can avoid needle injection or any potentially painful procedure," he told Fox News Digital. "The authors demonstrated that vaccine components in the floss coating can penetrate the junctional epithelium in gingival sulcus and reach the underlying tissues, leading to systemic antibody responses." The floss-based vaccination method could help to improve patient compliance if it goes through the full evaluation process, he noted. There are some limitations and drawbacks associated with floss-based vaccines, the researchers acknowledged. Babies and toddlers who don't have teeth yet wouldn't be candidates for the technique, for example. "In addition, we would need to know more about how or whether this approach would work for people who have gum disease or other oral infections," Gill added. Wang agreed that many questions remain to be answered about this experimental vaccination method. "In addition to the unclear impact of gingival tissue infection on vaccination, the local and systemic side effects of this vaccination method remain to be understood," he told Fox News Digital. "For example, vaccination at the gingival tissue may initiate local inflammation that eventually induces undesirable side effects." It's also not yet clear what exact path the vaccine components follow when traveling from the tooth site to the tissues or how the immune responses are generated, Wang noted. For more Health articles, visit "Lastly, from the translation perspective, the efficacy of floss-based vaccines would need to be comparable to conventional needle-based vaccines." The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by funds from the Whitacre Endowed Chair in Science and Engineering at Texas Tech University.
