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Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

mdpi.com

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Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#231

Post by nucleardog »

dorfsmay wrote: post #11
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #7

Getting sunlight in the morning, in particular, seems important. Even in winter months, I'll go outside for 30 minutes or so in nothing but shorts and do farmer walks, etc. and feel great throughout the day.

In winter, in the more northerly latitudes, being outside is not sufficient, because of the angle at which the sun ray hit, the skin cannot make vitamin D.

Not to mention at many of the places I’ve lived at high latitudes going outside for a half hour in shorts is likely to result in severe frostbite in the winter.

It was a very regular occurrence to hear the warnings on the news in the morning that it was cold enough to get frostbite on exposed skin in under a minute...

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#232

Post by neuronic »

filleduchaos wrote: post #198
55555 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And black people are disproportionately impacted by COVID. Isn't Africa doing surprisingly well?

> Isn't Africa doing surprisingly well? I've always wanted to ask someone personally: why is the fact that African nations haven't been overrun by COVID-19 surprising? I mean, I live here and I'm certainly very pleased that we've had such positive outcomes. But the constant tone of surprise from foreigners was funny at first but is now mildly annoying if I'm being honest; not you, obviously, but I've read one too man…

AFAIK it's basically demographics. Younger, less obese overall, not stuffed with industrial trash food over decades resulting in less comorbidities.

Also, if the vitamin D angle holds, Africa is probably pretty well positioned on that front. I would REALLY like to see COVID ICU numbers in regions with a significant marine/fish diet versus others.

(Although, imho, nutritional science is largely opinionated guess work with no basis in reality but an incredible ability to sell books off it).

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#233

Post by throwawaysea »

If those who are unhealthy or have worse dietary practices are experiencing higher fatality rates, why should the rest of us be subject to harsh lockdowns, restricted from gatherings, and restricted from patronizing businesses? This feels to be like more evidence as to why individuals should be free to assess risks and decide how they want to act. Those who are risk averse or unhealthy or vulnerable can self isolate indefinitely if needed.

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#234

Post by nucleardog »

beervirus wrote: post #28

The big question is whether taking vitamin D supplements would address this, or whether having low vitamin D just happens to correlate with the real risk factors (sedentary, indoor lifestyle; unhealthy diet; obesity; etc.).

That’s the obvious question that’s specifically raised as unanswered in all of these studies.

But given the risks of supplementing vitamin D are about as close to zero as you can get it seems likely it’s worth the gamble that it’s a causal link.

If you’re right, various severely beneficial health effects and potentially protection from one cause of death. If you’re wrong... fewer beneficial health effects?

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#235

Post by throwawaysea »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #122
DevX101 wrote: post #79

Authors controlled for age, sex. But I'd like to see additional control for race. Black people have less Vitamin D due to melanin blocking sunlight. And black people are disproportionately impacted by COVID. So I'm now curious whether it's really Vitamin D deficiency that's causing the poor outcomes, or some racial socioeconomic factor that Vitamin D is simply a marker for.

> black people are disproportionately impacted by COVID. Serious question: I thought the African-America community in America was affected by COVID-19 disproportionately due to blacks being more likely to be having comorbidities. Is that not the case?

It probably is the case, but comorbidities are being ignored in favor of crisis-exploiting political narratives as to how systemic racism is causing disproportionate impact to African Americans. However, it is worth noting that comorbidities are also an issue more broadly across the entire American populace. Obesity rates are above 40%. And so is vitamin D deficiency. And in fact obesity worsens vitamin D deficiency (https://www.livescience.com/26961-obesity-causes-vitamin-d-d...).

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#236

Post by sunshinerag »

foota wrote: post #80
mensetmanusman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an amazing idea. I would definitely be more incentivized to give blood if it gave me a run down of various nutrients just from a curiosity point of view. E.g. what are my selenium levels compared to the general population?

Depends, how much browser integration testing are you doing?

nice one.

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#237

Post by filleduchaos »

jobigoud wrote: post #230
filleduchaos wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't Africa doing surprisingly well? I've always wanted to ask someone personally: why is the fact that African nations haven't been overrun by COVID-19 surprising? I mean, I live here and I'm certainly very pleased that we've had such positive outcomes. But the constant tone of surprise from foreigners was funny at first but is now mildly annoying if I'm being honest; not you, obviously, but I've read one too man…

The unspoken assumption is that everything else being equal african countries should have been impacted at least as much as other countries, but probably more impacted for having less intensive care units per inhabitant.

But everything else is not equal, is it? Ignoring material conditions is "assume a spherical cow in a vacuum" levels of bad analysis.

Even at that, using intensive care unit counts as the metric worth paying attention to in a public health crisis seems rather off; public health is and should be the domain of the community, not of the hospitals. To be fair, "how likely are people to do what they're supposed to to protect their communities" is far trickier to measure than just counting hospital beds.

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#238

Post by MaurizioPz »

ryandvm wrote: post #54
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #10

It's unfortunate that it is not simple to get regular tests for vitamin and mineral deficiencies. The whole process seems to be stuck behind the doctor appointment firewall. This might be one of the reasons why Theranos was so readily believed. As the quantified self movement that gained popularity around the same time showed, there's an appetite in certain segments of the population for this type of testing and trac…

I've often wondered if it would be economically feasible for blood donation banks to do this as a perk/incentive for giving blood. Every 6 months or so, you donate blood and as part of the process you get run-of-the-mill bloodwork report emailed to you a few days later. You'd have to make sure you weren't creating an incentive for sick people to donate blood just for the lab work, but otherwise it seems like it would…

At least in Italy in part it works that way. You get some tests at every donation (like HIV) and some once a year (like colesterol) https://www.portaledeldono.it/donare/esami-al-donatore/ (link in italian)

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#239

Post by Uberphallus »

mattmanser wrote: post #189
untererdisch wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77093-z

The fatality rate was high in vitamin D deficient (21% vs 3.1%).

Vitamin D deficient people usually have other deficiencies as well, pinning it down to D is textbook causation-correlation mixup.

As TFA says, it "may" account for it. Or may not. You need a control group with D (but no other) deficiency to upgrade from "may" to "does".

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#240

Post by Uberphallus »

SifJar wrote: post #226
hda111 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just a correlation. No need to take vitamin d.

Do you have some evidence of this?

Yes, the very same paper.

> Although results of an observational study, such as this one, need to be interpreted with caution, as done by the authors [1], due to the potential of residual confounding or reverse causality (i.e., vitamin D insufficiency resulting from poor health status at baseline rather than vice versa),

You need a control group with vitamin D deficiency but no other health issues to prove the hypothesis. They are just stating there's a correlation worth looking into.

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