[HN Gopher] Covid-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely with Vi...
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Covid-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely with Vitamin D3 Status
Author : Ambolia
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-10-31 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| glofish wrote:
| There is a long history of Vitamin D deficiency being linked to
| cancer, heart disease, respiratory infection, stroke, diabetes,
| and death. For a detailed discussion of the subject see the blog
| post: Vitamin D - The evidence
|
| https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence...
|
| > _" We now have results for over 1500 RCTs on Vitamin D
| supplementation. Some of the largest and most significant trials
| are listed and summarized at the end of this article. When tested
| on its ability to prevent disease, Vitamin D has failed to live
| up to expectations."_
|
| Thousands of peer reviewed research papers have been published
| that Vitamin D does truly work for cancer and stroke etc and all
| the above. But then, as the blog points out, none of the claims
| held once bigger and properly designed RCTs were performed. The
| only disease provably cured by Vitamin D supplementation was ...
| Vitamin D deficiency.
|
| Hence I am quite skeptical here as well. The eagerness to embrace
| Vitamin D as a silver bullet is no different than that of
| Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine.
|
| It is not that simple to cure COVID - people dearly wish it were
| hence they want to believe.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| D3 (and a bunch of other vitamins) might just be a proxy for
| simply good nutrition or even just wealth. If your D3 levels
| are alright, maybe everything else in your health is alright?
| [deleted]
| rob_c wrote:
| Yes, but unfortunately there is a genetic element which has
| been disentangled with regard to vitamin d production
| otherwise. I.e. certain minorities in the developed world
| have good otherwise health but poor vit-d due to the
| production being related to absorbed sunlight through the
| skin
| jinpa_zangpo wrote:
| There are relatively few dietary sources of Vitamin D, fatty
| fish and fortified foods being the main sources. It is quite
| possible to eat a healthy diet and be deficient in Vitamin D
| if you do not eat these foods. The principal source of
| Vitamin D is exposure to sunlight on bare skin and people at
| northern latitudes cannot get sufficient exposure during the
| winter.
| glofish wrote:
| yes, I think you are onto something, for ever research paper
| they need to properly disentangle and normalize the various
| effects - controlling the factors.
|
| Sounds like disentangling vitamin D levels is much more
| difficult than say controlling for social status, or income,
| age etc.
| rob_c wrote:
| Yep. Now is that related to overall wealth of people with low
| vit-d. Or is it linked to other factors like genetic
| heritage?
|
| The extreme low cases of vit-d in developed nations tends to
| have a genetic component or other health thing. But the
| genetic link I think has been disentangled from overall
| affluence. I.e. certain people if they take vit-d supplements
| can improve their overall health.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Its certain correlated with disability. Those who are
| chronically ill wont be getting out into the sun as much and
| tend to have low Vitamin D. It is a well known proxy for
| overall health.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| The title is quite something. The part that made it here seems
| reasonable enough, as it can be understood as "higher D3 levels
| help in not dying as much as with lower D3 levels" which is
| possible.
|
| The other half is "a Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could
| Theoretically Be Achieved at 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D3" which the
| abstract argues for because "Regression suggested a theoretical
| point of zero mortality at approximately 50 ng/mL D3."
|
| Someone sent in the clowns. (after that abstract I'm not sure I
| want to check out the details)
| glofish wrote:
| I agree, that they even have a dosage at which they predict
| zero deaths is nothing short of ludicrous. It gives away that
| they authors are unqualified.
| [deleted]
| azalemeth wrote:
| Why not go one further, and suggest Lazarus-like effects at
| 100 ng/mL?
| [deleted]
| phonypc wrote:
| > _after that abstract I 'm not sure I want to check out the
| details_
|
| There's a fairly short review of why the study is kinda silly
| here: https://gidmk.medium.com/vitamin-d-covid-19-and-the-
| promise-...
| m0llusk wrote:
| That article is just a load of snark. It starts off my
| claiming that Vitamin D is suggested as a cure for all
| kinds of things, but the science shows that low Vitamin D
| levels are correlated with various diseases. There is a
| huge difference between saying low levels should be avoided
| in order to reduce disease and claiming that there is a
| cure. Not being able to tell the difference shows a lack of
| interest or understanding in the basic science involved.
| Railing against purported false claims is a rhetorical
| tactic and it is worth noting there are no citations for
| any of the claimed cure claims.
|
| And the science involved is quite complex as recent studies
| have suggested that people can become resistant to Vitamin
| D in a way that mirrors insulin sensitivity. This means
| that serum levels vary in ways that are very much not
| directly related to supplementation, especially dietary
| supplementation.
|
| In any case getting distracted by the "Regression SUGGESTED
| a THEORETICAL zero point of mortality ..." remark doesn't
| make sense because even Vitamin D enthusiasts rarely
| sustain levels much above 40.
| calibas wrote:
| It's proactive, not reactive treatment for a disease. It's part
| of being healthy in the first place, which prevents developing
| severe COVID, cancer, heart disease, respiratory infection,
| stroke, diabetes, and death. It's like a car, you give it oil
| and maintenance to prevent engine damage, you don't give it oil
| to fix engine damage.
|
| Acting like binging on Vitamin D is supposed to suddenly cure
| any of those diseases is a complete misunderstanding how all
| this works. You can greatly reduce your likelihood of severe
| COVID and 100 other serious/fatal diseases through simple
| lifestyle changes, but they're not cures for those diseases.
| And fixing vitamin D deficiency shouldn't mean you take more
| pills, it should mean you get more exercise out in the Sun.
|
| Also, if vitamin D deficiency is an underlying cause of severe
| COVID, that would explain the enormous racial inequality for
| hospitalization and deaths rates. All these things are linked
| to the amount of melanin in one's skin. The hospitalization and
| death rates for COVID are double for people with Native
| American and African blood, and both groups have much higher
| rates of Vitamin D deficiency.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nutritionreport/pdf/Second%20Nutrition%2...
| mattzito wrote:
| Right, but the GP-linked study disagrees with your assertion:
|
| " We now have results for over 1500 RCTs on Vitamin D
| supplementation. Some of the largest and most significant
| trials are listed and summarized at the end of this article.
| When tested on its ability to prevent disease, Vitamin D has
| failed to live up to expectations."
|
| So no, it does not seem to work
| new_stranger wrote:
| The 1500 RCT's are actually only 31 studies from what I can
| see. Those studies are do not all overlap either, they are
| all over the spectrum (D3 and flu, D3 and mortality, D3 and
| having children with Asthma).
|
| While good sources for specifics, there is a lot of wiggle
| room for follow up in some of these spaces where the
| results amount to a single study.
|
| I think the summaries speak for themselves:
|
| > "Vitamin D ... ... did reduce cancer death by 16%"
|
| > "Vitamin D did not reduce the risk of cancer"
|
| Seems like more research is needed here in these specific
| areas along with what exact version of D3 we are talking
| about (they are not all manufactured or extracted the same)
| and if supporting nutrients/lifestyles effect anything.
|
| I think the article just makes the good point that D3 isn't
| the magic bullet to any and all sickness without really
| being able to specify with a high level of certainly what
| it does help with.
| vibrato2 wrote:
| Why parrot the incorrect denigration of ivermectin and
| hydroxychloroquine in this post?
|
| Misinformation and all... c19ivermectin.com
| rob_c wrote:
| The statement is broadly that this is not intended as a
| treatment but offers a useful way of deciding how likely a
| patient is to not respond to initial therapy.
|
| I don't think a sensible person is suggesting a massive dose of
| vitamin d on a arrival is a cure.
|
| As for the consequence of is the deficiency linked to poor
| otherwise health that is interesting to disentangle.
|
| This does offer a very good explanation to the idiotic
| statements of "covid is racist". I.e. if it is linked to vit-d
| deficiency it offers a way to reduce deaths in minorities.
| These early concerns suggested that covid would hit Africa for
| instance really badly, and it is yet to do so.
| nradov wrote:
| There have been a bunch of other studies on vitamin D and
| COVID-19. Before jumping to conclusions and commenting here I
| recommend reviewing the existing literature.
|
| https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/
| threefour wrote:
| Also see:
| https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-...
|
| "...what made the people with high vitamin D levels so healthy
| was not the vitamin itself. That was just a marker. Their vitamin
| D levels were high because they were getting plenty of exposure
| to the thing that was really responsible for their good health--
| that big orange ball shining down from above."
| _Microft wrote:
| Figure 2 in their paper [0] shows the mechanism via which (as
| they say) vitamin D3 is supposed to improve outcomes of a Covid19
| infection. It seems to counteract the negative effects on ACE2
| levels that a Covid19 infection has which seem to be responsible
| for bad outcomes.
|
| [0] Open Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/10/3596/htm
| GaryTang wrote:
| "Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could Theoretically Be Achieved at
| 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D3"
|
| Or in other words, the vaccine could theoretically not be needed
| if vitamin d3 levels are adequate.
| sarks_nz wrote:
| This statement assumes the only bad outcome from COVID is
| death.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| For the overwhelming majority of people that is the only bad
| outcome. Severe conditions like ARDS are rare, but also
| correlate with Vitamin D deficiency even outside of the
| pandemic (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903964/). As for
| other symptoms that are being lumped together under the label
| "long COVID", their incidence seems low, the severity is
| usually low, and nearly all conditions disappear over time.
| Some have suggested that perhaps those lingering effects are
| no different than a typical cold or flu, except this time we
| are all focused on this issue and noticing these things.
|
| Personally I am not convinced that the young and heathy need
| to treat COVID specially. This is a pandemic of the old and
| unhealthy more than anything.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Severe conditions like ARDS are rare_
|
| Polio was lethal in less than 1% of cases, and caused
| severe disability in a small fraction, too. Yet people
| didn't go into hysterics when asked to make a relatively
| larger sacrifice (the polio vaccine was _far_ less safe
| than modern ones) for their country.
| uselesscynicism wrote:
| I wish the people agreeing with this statement wouldn't
| choose to flag the grandparent so I could make up my own mind
| about what it said.. but anything that goes against the
| narrative must be censored by you people, I guess.
|
| Who are "you people", you ask? BlueAnon mainstream conspiracy
| theory believing paranoids, the kind that put masks on their
| children and then put them into their cars, even though
| riding in a car is more dangerous to a child than COVID
| User23 wrote:
| This statement assumes that death is the only bad outcome
| from COVID that sufficient Vitamin D3 levels prevent.
|
| Death is useful as a metric because, unlike other health
| outcomes, particularly quality of life ones, there's no
| element of subjectivity.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Another useful aspect of death as a metric, is that it is
| the most widely reported (as compared to, say, maximum
| fever, amount of ventilation required, days in hospital,
| lasting anosmia, etc. etc.)
| wrycoder wrote:
| It appears that with COVID, the proximate cause of death is
| often mis-coded, for financial reasons.
| simion314 wrote:
| You could measure days of hospitalization too, I would
| suggest both vaccine and Vitamin supplements if there are
| no side-effects.
| rob_c wrote:
| No. The statement is making a statement on deaths. You are
| implying this.
| phonypc wrote:
| Nah it's just a comically absurd proposition, even if you take
| the implication that low D3 is _causing_ COVID mortality at
| face value.
|
| Obligatory relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/605/
| scotty79 wrote:
| Or you could get a vaccine, supplement vitamin D3 and in case
| you'll get a positive test result, take fluvoxamine and
| budesonide inhaler.
|
| Because why take chances with the virus that causes cognitive
| deficit proportional to the severity of other symptoms.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I think the "why take chances" logic can be applied in
| multiple ways though. The risks from COVID are incredibly low
| for the young and healthy, and even lower if you consider
| just those with balanced diets (without VDD). It's difficult
| to compare the tradeoffs between multiple competing low risk
| choices. Why take chances with a new vaccine that could prove
| to have some long term effect? Why take chances with shutting
| down schools and impacting children for a lifetime? Why take
| chances with the lower oxygen and breathing difficulties of
| masks? And so on. It makes more sense for individuals to
| evaluate their risk tolerance and circumstances to decide
| which tradeoffs they are willing to take on.
| manwe150 wrote:
| That line of reasoning applies also to simply getting out
| of bed in the morning, or risking COVID illness without the
| proven safety benefits of the vaccines, both of which have
| known long-term side-effects. Whereas, if you are healthy,
| the vaccine has been abundantly proven to statistically
| make you more healthy, so what "trade-off" are you talking
| about?
| twofornone wrote:
| >Whereas, if you are healthy, the vaccine has been
| abundantly proven to statistically make you more healthy
|
| This is emphatically false. Immunity to a specific virus
| does not make a person healthier and the vaccines do have
| a documented risk of side effects, in addition to rapidly
| mounting evidence of poor efficacy.
|
| People seem to be worshipping these vaccines as some sort
| of mystical religious artifacts at this point.
|
| The vaccines do not come without a cost. This is a
| dangerous myth, even if you think the risks are low.
| scotty79 wrote:
| People are very bad at estimating risks using their gut
| feelings. They overestimate low probabilities and
| underestimating high.
|
| Did you know that polio is survivable in 99.8% of cases and
| asymptomatic in 92% (up to 99% by some estimates) of cases?
|
| So, was it worth inventing a vaccine for it? Or taking it?
| Risking long term effects?
|
| About long term effect of mRNA vaccines... you know what
| has long term effects? Covid.
|
| And if anyone read about mRNA technology for an afternoon
| it would be painfully obvious to them that whatever super
| long term effects covid vaccines might have, covid will
| virtually surely cause them as well, because mRNA vaccines
| don't do anything else than covid does. And don't fool
| yourself that you don't get covid. Unless you are planning
| to die of something else soon. I will not get covid is as
| silly as saying I won't get neither flu nor cold before I
| die, even asymptomatically.
|
| > It makes more sense for individuals to evaluate their
| risk tolerance and circumstances to decide which trade-offs
| they are willing to take on.
|
| No, it doesn't, because people actively avoid available
| knowledge in their personal risk estimations. So their
| estimation of both the risk and their willingness to take
| on risks is estimated wrong.
|
| Did you hear about a single person dying in hospital from
| covid saying, "we'll maybe I'm dying but I'm proud of my
| decision to not get vaccinated, not supporting mask
| wearing" or whatever? Because plenty of such people
| recognized they were horribly wrong in their estimations.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I did read the recent discussion on HN around polio, and
| it does bring up some interesting questions as you've
| noted. But polio's effects were more prevalent. The WHO
| says (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
| sheets/detail/poliomyelit...) that 1 in 200 infected with
| polio experience irreversible paralysis (usually the
| legs), and 5-10% of those with paralysis die, meaning the
| IFR was 0.025%. The IFR for COVID-19 is incredibly low
| for those under 50, as most of the deaths impacted senior
| citizens. Even the CDC's conservative planning scenarios
| (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-
| scena...) use a planning IFR for minors of 20 in 1M
| infections (0.002%) - which is an order of magnitude less
| than polio.
|
| A big part of what made polio's vaccine acceptance easy
| was the graphic imagery of children being afflicted with
| a lifetime of paralysis. There was a certain
| psychological impact on society from that imagery. People
| evaluated the risks and decided they were better off
| going with the vaccine. Another boost for vaccine
| confidence was that the vaccines used approaches a that
| were already in wide use in other vaccines.
|
| > About long term effect of mRNA vaccines... you know
| what has long term effects? Covid.
|
| The risks of long term effects with COVID are very low,
| and their severity is very low, and in almost all cases
| those symptoms disappear. So why is your desire to
| contain one type of low risk any more important than
| others' desire to contain other types of low risk?
|
| Regarding mRNA vaccines - I don't think you are seeing
| things the way the vaccine hesitant are. The mRNA vaccine
| can have long term effects we don't understand. Just
| because we are focused on its mechanism for efficacy
| doesn't meant here aren't other possible mechanisms
| involved that we haven't understood yet. Likewise, we
| don't know if any of the other vaccine ingredients will
| have long-term effects. The mRNA vaccine doses are not
| solely composed of mRNA material and lipids. And
| certainly we've seen numerous products - both medical and
| non-medical - banned decades after their initial
| introduction. The risks of that are low, but it's
| nonzero. And I shouldn't have to say this, but in case it
| helps make my points more acceptable, I am vaccinated
| with an mRNA vaccine as is my entire family.
|
| > Did you hear about a single person dying in hospital
| from covid saying, "we'll maybe I'm dying but I'm proud
| of my decision to not get vaccinated, not supporting mask
| wearing" or whatever? Because plenty of such people
| recognized they were horribly wrong in their estimations.
|
| I don't understand why you're bringing this up. This is
| the exact type of anecdotal risk estimation that you call
| out a few sentences earlier. I could equally say that the
| few people who experience severe vaccine side effects may
| also experience regret. Or that years down the road, it
| is possible that all those who received [some vaccine]
| will regret their choice if it is found to cause cancer
| or something else. The thing is, we don't really know
| because we are dealing with the unknown. We don't
| understand either the virus or the human body fully. For
| this and other reasons, I feel it is legitimate for
| people to choose their own risk profile based on their
| experiences and gut. I also don't think anyone should be
| obligated to undergo a medical procedure like vaccination
| against their will, because bodily autonomy is a
| fundamental civil liberty and because I don't think
| here's an obligation to have to take action to protect
| others against some third-party agent like a virus.
| rob_c wrote:
| Given the vaccine doesn't stop symptoms or catching it is
| there a point to what you're saying. Taking vitamin d
| probably reduces symptoms across the board reducing the need
| for additional palliative care
| rob_c wrote:
| So I'm assuming people who down vote assume preventing
| deaths is achieved through some means that doesn't impact
| the rest of the course of a disease... I wish we lived in
| such a simple universe
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think people take offence in you not noticing that
| vaccines also reduce symptoms and even stop them in some
| cases. And that this fact has been better proven than any
| claims of vitamin D effect on covid.
|
| Literally billions of people already took vaccines for
| covid, some, almost a yer ago. Time to update your mental
| model.
| mzimbres wrote:
| Human beings have been living in europe for over 100,000 years.
| White skin doesn't seem to be older than a 10,000 years (see the
| skin analysis of the first briton). I don't think it would have
| taken so much time to evolve white skin had it really had the
| importance that is being attributed to it nowadays. I am very
| skeptical about its importance on preventing not only covid but
| also many other deseases.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| COVID19 sort of blew the lid on several "health" pandemics that
| were underway by highlighting them. Vitamin D deficiency is one
| of them.
|
| The hidden diabetes surge in malnutritioned asian and western
| countries also comes to mind.
|
| Or the horrendous damage done to the lungs by the smog in the
| chinese mainland.
| amelius wrote:
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775003
| jackfoxy wrote:
| Alternative sources for covid information have been beating the
| vitamin D and dietary zinc drum since almost the beginning of the
| pandemic. This could have saved so many lives. Yet the
| authoritarian medical establishment (governments and approved
| NGOs) doubled down on _wait for vaccine_ providing no other
| prevention recommendations than masks and lockdowns and actively
| suppressed information on treatments.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Correlation I get. How are they making the jump to causation?
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| Finally, finally and finally!
| testplzignore wrote:
| It's not a good idea to have so many nested try blocks.
| lvs wrote:
| This is another long discarded bit of snake oil. If there were
| genuine home remedies for Covid that you could buy at the grocery
| store, we'd have told you about it. It turns out there are only
| two: vaccines and masks. It's healthy to have the recommended
| amount of Vitamin D, but not at the expense of a vaccine and a
| mask.
|
| You decide:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/8541492/b...
| ahallock wrote:
| Yeah, you should have a well-rounded set of defenses. I don't
| think anyone is saying vitamin-D is a silver bullet.
| c-c-c-c-c wrote:
| Put a mask on and breathe on a pair of glasses.
|
| Then please explain how the water molecules can pass through
| while other aerosols cannot.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Please look up the size of individual H2O molecules (which
| are what you exhale, not water drops).
| hanniabu wrote:
| Water particles aren't getting through. Please look up how
| condensation works, it's about a difference in temperatures.
| aeternum wrote:
| Water particles absolutely are getting through. Yes the
| glasses are colder and breathe is warmer but it is still
| the water vapor from the hot moist breath that is the
| primary source of the water condensate.
|
| While water particles do pass easily, viruses may not as
| respiratory aerosols are orders of magnitude larger about
| 1.6-5um vs. water at 0.27nm
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Maybe. E.g. most Americans are still ignorant to the effect of
| obesity on severity, good advice would also include trying to
| lose a pounds a week, as it would be more effective than cloth
| masks once you catch it (which everyone will eventually,
| vaccinated or not)
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Im bored to death of Covid arguments, but I bet if you had to
| choose, healthy Vitamin D levels would be more effective than
| masks both for the individual and society.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| Who is the "we" you speak for?
| mg wrote:
| I have been collecting studies related to treatment and
| prevention of the common cold for a while now. Every time I have
| a cold, I spend some time growing the list.
|
| So far, Vitamin D3 is one of the more promising treatments in the
| list.
|
| Here are two interesting RCTs regarding Vitamin D and respiratory
| tract infections:
|
| Preventive Effects of Vitamin D on Seasonal Influenza:
| https://journals.lww.com/pidj/fulltext/2018/08000/preventive...
|
| Vitamin D Supplementation for the Prevention of Acute Respiratory
| Tract Infection:
| https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/202/5/809/1746565
| glofish wrote:
| You can add a bunch of paper from here:
|
| https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence...
| mg wrote:
| Thanks, I will.
| jleyank wrote:
| D3 might be a proxy for age, as I thought older folks were to
| take D and Calcium to reduce the chance of osteoporosis. It might
| also be a proxy for overall health, as those short of D3 are
| probably not eating "well-balanced diets, ..." that marketeers
| are fond of talking about. It's also possible that it has a
| direct effect on the result, which would (as mentioned already)
| make it an excellent complement of vaccination. One reduces the
| chance of the ultimate problem, one reduces the chance of
| duration/problems. And it's cheap.
| ng12 wrote:
| But I would expect older people taking D3 for (pre)osteoporosis
| would generally be high risk for COVID. I know this thread is
| overflowing with anecdotal information but two family members
| in their sixties had completely asymptotic covid infections.
| Neither was generally healthy (obesity in one, asthma in the
| other) but both supplemented with Vitamin D3.
| jleyank wrote:
| Vaxxed or predelta or just fortunate?
| ng12 wrote:
| Predelta, still fortune as both only knew they had it
| because they got tested at work.
| truly wrote:
| From the second paragraph in the abstract, it seems that they
| adjust for age: "Mortality rates from clinical studies were
| corrected for age, sex, and diabetes."
| elliekelly wrote:
| Vitamin D also correlated heavily with race which it doesn't
| seem they adjust for?
| jleyank wrote:
| Had not considered this - it's a good point. There is a lot
| of fortified food in the N American, possibly Western
| European diet which includes D3 (particularly for milk
| drinkers). But milk drinking is limited to particular gene
| families as I thought it was a (quite) recent mutation...
| hanniabu wrote:
| Does it adjust for other vitamins? People with sufficient
| vitamin D levels likely take supplements along with other
| vitamins so it may be that it's not just vitamin D, but it in
| combination with other vitamins. If this study just gave
| people vitamin D supplements and nothing else then it may be
| that it didn't have needed "supporting vitamins".
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Hasn't this been known for over a year and a half now? This isn't
| the first study on Vitamin D. Some past discussions on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24912172
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23119949
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23023703
|
| Another comorbidity is obesity, which can also cause Vitamin D
| deficiency.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26924786
|
| An interesting implication of all this is that the authoritarian
| measures used to manage the pandemic are effectively a subsidy.
| Those who are young or healthy or have a nutritionally balanced
| diet are taking on pains (lockdowns, mandates) to create a lower
| risk situation for everyone else. Personally I feel it is better
| for governments to provide education and strong guidance, but to
| ultimately favor individual choice and stay away from top down
| measures. With COVID, those who are young have incredibly low IFR
| to begin with, and they could have gone about their lives and
| built up antibodies naturally, which would then make it safer for
| everyone else anyways.
| vmception wrote:
| This was an observation amongst the vast sea of observations
| for over a year and a half. It still needed to be studied.
|
| A year and a half ago, and partly even now, the kneejerk
| response has been "ah, it must be because people with low
| Vitamin D are doing _other_ inactive things with poor diets and
| low sunlight " as opposed to something closer to "Vitamin D
| supplements are a cheap existing solution for a reason we still
| don't know yet"
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The _main_ point of restrictions was to reduce case numbers
| coming into hospitals and overwhelming them, since COVID
| patients who do get hospitalized tend to stay there a long
| time.
|
| If you are a young person who gets into a car crash and you
| need immediate treatment in the ER, an overwhelmed hospital
| might either mean sending an injured person into a place
| crowded with COVID patients, or scrambling to find a hospital
| that has room. Even now there are still US hospitals turning
| away ambulances due to lack of capacity.
| uselesscynicism wrote:
| If overwhelmed hospitals was a concern they wouldn't be
| firing naturally immunized nurses that do not wish to be
| vaccinated.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| > and they could have gone about their lives and built up
| antibodies naturally, which would then make it safer for
| everyone else anyways.
|
| "Built up antibodies naturally" is a coy way of saying kill the
| maximum number of people possible before reaching herd
| immunity.
|
| Given the rapid pace of vaccine development, strict measures to
| slow the spread of the virus seemed reasonable. Some countries,
| like New Zealand and Taiwan, will largely escape the pandemic
| unscathed.
| sjwalter wrote:
| > "Built up antibodies naturally" is a coy way of saying kill
| the maximum number of people possible before reaching herd
| immunity.
|
| This is absurd in the extreme. The proposition was that those
| that are the least impacted by covid--specifically, those
| like me who are healthy, young, getting adequate sunlight--
| should not have to bear the responsibility for those who are
| vulnerable.
|
| Covid risk for people like me, and us healthy folk are a
| great large chunk of the population, is less than a typical
| flu.
|
| Since we don't have as extreme policy responses to the flu,
| do you characterize that as well as "kill the maximum number
| of people possible"?
|
| And saying that New Zealand came through unscathed I guess
| just shows how differently we think. The society has come to
| accept being forced into isolation, accept quarantines and
| curfews like their unruly teenagers, accept all manner of
| tyranny--to you, they're unscathed because they have fewer
| covid-related deaths. To me, covid-related deaths--which are
| dwarfed still in the USA by heart disease and cancer and
| other ailments, don't even rise to the level of general
| concern.
|
| Then again, I live in Montana. Everyone doesn't care. Only on
| the internet and talking to Canadian or coastal friends does
| it come up. Around here, you say covid, and a lot of folks
| probably think it's a migratory bird--then again, hunting
| season just opened up.
|
| And with all us ignoring this crazy pandemic, you know what?
| The world's not ending. No vaccine mandates. No mask
| mandates. Everyone's "unscathed".
| landryraccoon wrote:
| > This is absurd in the extreme. The proposition was that
| those that are the least impacted by covid--specifically,
| those like me who are healthy, young, getting adequate
| sunlight--should not have to bear the responsibility for
| those who are vulnerable.
|
| We have radically different values.
|
| Of course the strongest and most able in society have to
| bear the majority of the burdens. That simply seems morally
| obvious. The rich should pay more taxes than the poor. The
| young and healthy fight in the military and not the old and
| infirm. Adult children will make personal sacrifices to
| save their elderly parents. What about asking the healthy
| to make sacrifices to protect the weak is unjust?
|
| A world view of "let the weak fend for themselves for the
| strong should take what they want" is utterly repugnant.
| sjwalter wrote:
| Kids are the least at risk of covid. Should they bear the
| most responsibility? Lol.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| How are kids bearing responsibility? It seems to me kids
| are doing fine with social distancing, mask wearing and
| all. Parents complain about their kids masking up more
| than the kids do.
|
| But the ultimate way kids are being forced to bear
| responsibility is their parents dying from covid and
| leaving them as orphans.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p1007-covid-19-or
| pha...
|
| https://time.com/6104829/us-covid-orphans/
|
| If you don't want kids to have to bear responsibility
| with covid, don't let their parents die from it.
| rob_c wrote:
| Thanks for the link summaries.
|
| I fail to understand the down votes.
| 323 wrote:
| People downvote Vitamin-D posts because they think that if
| you talk about Vitamin-D deficiency you are an anti-vaxxer.
| rob_c wrote:
| Yes I must agree, I was being sarcastic trying to call out
| the groupthink.
| md8z wrote:
| Or it could be because the grandparent post contains the
| common non-sequitur about "individual choice". That
| rhetoric is pointless in a discussion about public health
| and ruins a perfectly good comment. An infectious disease
| does not care what your individual choice is.
| rob_c wrote:
| By that logic we should ban sex due to HIV. This is an
| extremely dangerous argument...
| jdminhbg wrote:
| It's obviously not a non sequitur, it's the essential
| tradeoff we're making. We could weld every person into
| their home for the next month and eliminate Covid, but we
| don't do that because we're trading off public health
| maximalism vs individual freedoms. The entire point of
| the political process is to decide where that line is.
| md8z wrote:
| An infectious disease doesn't care about any of that, it
| doesn't care what your political process is or where you
| draw the line. It's not a trade off of public health
| maximalism vs individual freedoms, it never is that
| simple. Every decision you make there trades someone
| else's individual freedom by increasing their risk of
| contracting the disease. Please let's stop dancing around
| that and trying to play politics here.
|
| The only fool proof solution that exists is to totally
| quarantine people, but the grandparent post already took
| that off the table, so even if we wanted to have that
| discussion there is simply nowhere left for it to go. See
| what I mean here? This rhetoric doesn't do anything
| besides shut down the conversation.
| rob_c wrote:
| Again.
|
| You are advocating ban sex due to HIV. Please stop being
| so black and white about policy involving human beings
| and reality.
| md8z wrote:
| No I am not, please stop this. You're jumping to the
| other extreme and that's exactly why I think that type of
| rhetoric is not helpful. If you have something nuanced
| you'd like to say then I'd love to hear it.
|
| Personally if I was somewhere where there was an HIV
| outbreak, and we didn't have adequate resources to test
| and protect against it, then I _would_ say that
| abstaining from promiscuous sex and promoting that as a
| public health measure would be a perfectly reasonable
| thing to do. That would actually probably help the
| situation in areas of the world where the ongoing HIV
| epidemic is particularly bad, which by the way is still a
| real thing.
| sjwalter wrote:
| promoting as a public health measure vs. mandating as a
| public health measure
|
| do you see a difference between these two?
| md8z wrote:
| I mean, it depends? What is the measure and what are you
| trying to do?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| As a reminder, you can use the D Minder Pro app to estimate your
| daily vitamin D intake from sun exposure. It was free during the
| first year of the pandemic, right now it costs $1.99.
| DelightOne wrote:
| The Apple Watch (or any other smart watch) should have a built-
| in sun measuring sensor, noting when people have not enough sun
| exposure to produce the necessary amount of Vitamin D to be
| healthy. Once AR is there, they could make a game out of it,
| showing progress bars at the peripery of the eyes. This could
| make reaching the targets much easier for a lot more people.
| nradov wrote:
| Wristwatches are often covered by sleeves.
| illvm wrote:
| That's fine. As long as the sensor is available the user
| can expose it. I think this is a pretty cool idea, and
| would yield more accurate measurements than estimating
| based off of latitude and cloud coverage alone. Albeit
| it'll all but guarantee tan lines.
| [deleted]
| DelightOne wrote:
| How much sun does that block? Workarounds may be feasible,
| depending on the mechanism.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| That sounds like a good way to get sued over someone's
| melanoma.
| bt1a wrote:
| Easily preventable with a 100 page ToS to agree to before
| allowing usage!
| bool3max wrote:
| > Once AR is there, they could make a game out of it, showing
| progress bars at the peripery of the eyes.
|
| Are you good?
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| GPS is sufficient.
| jliptzin wrote:
| For what it's worth, I had a physical in my mid-20s where my
| doctor saw my vitamin D levels were low, so he told me to
| supplement with vitamin D. I take 10,000 IU with vitamin K about
| 5x/week. I am 35 now and I happened to check my levels around Jan
| 2020, to make sure I wasn't overdoing it. I was at 53 ng/mL,
| which was perfect.
|
| The pandemic came around, and while a lot of people around me got
| sick, I never did, but I had also been good about mask adherence.
| So I was a little surprised in August 2020 when my doctor gave me
| a COVID antibody test (blood draw), just to see, had come back
| positive, considering I had felt completely fine through that
| whole period.
|
| Then again a few months later, when my SO came down with covid,
| needless to say we had extremely close contact during the
| infectious period, and I was still completely fine.
|
| I'm not trying to be a vitamin D evangelist or anything, of
| course I could just be one of the lucky ones when it comes to
| covid, but I feel like it's a cheap and easy thing to try if you
| aren't currently supplementing. And of course, I am vaccinated as
| well now.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I take 10,000 IU with vitamin K about 5x/week. I am 35 now
| and I happened to check my levels around Jan 2020, to make sure
| I wasn't overdoing it. I was at 53 ng/mL, which was perfect.
|
| As a counter example, I took 5,000 IU per day and almost ended
| up over the 100ng/dL upper limit. I had to reduce my
| supplementation to avoid overdose.
|
| Vitamin D supplementation is very person-dependent, so I
| recommend anyone supplementing with higher dose supplements
| (5000IU and up) check their blood levels every few years.
| tamcap wrote:
| RE: your last sentence. High dose supplementation of vitamin D
| should be done after consulting with your doctor (like you
| did). As a fat soluble vitamin, our bodies sometimes struggle
| to dispose of the excess. Therefore a person with "normal"
| vitamin D levels who begins supplementing at high levels is
| potentially risking some side effects. It's always good to be
| monitored in situations like those.
|
| It seems you are doing exactly that, which is great.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Started taking high levels of d3 a few months before covid, as I
| had very low levels. (Autoimmune)
|
| A year later and I got covid. A few scary nights. I recovered but
| had a sharp increase in micro-clotting. Something that was an
| issue before Covid. I had to double blood thinners to keep
| symptoms under control. Took six months before I could lower
| dosage again.
|
| Covid aside I'm much healthier since upping d3. I had been bed
| ridden with uncontrollable migraines the year prior.
| ffritz wrote:
| What is your dosage?
| treeman79 wrote:
| 3000u a day
| rob_c wrote:
| Good to hear this has helped you :)
| rob_c wrote:
| And a down vote for wishing someone well... Lovely community
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