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The virus had continued spreading in the southern hemisphere despite the summer season. What makes you think it will disappear in the northern hemisphere?

taxicabjesus 6y ago
I don't know much about southern hemisphere's current SARS-CoV2 cases, but people everywhere are Vitamin-D deficient. Some recent research found that the old vitamin D recommendations were a fraction of what people actually need for optimal health [0]. Cities are particularly good at creating deficient populations. Human skin normally synthesizes vitamin D when exposed to ultraviolet light. People with darker skin need more sunlight to produce adequate vitamin D, which is presumably one of the main reasons why the super-virus' victims disproportionately have darker skin [1]. [0] The Big Vitamin D Mistake - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541280/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541280/ [1] COVID-19 ’ICU’ risk – 20-fold greater in the Vitamin D Deficient. BAME, African Americans, the Older, Institutionalised and Obese, are at greatest risk. Sun and ‘D’-supplementation – Game-changers? Research urgently required - https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1548/rr-6 https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1548/rr-6
tomhoward 6y ago
That's not in evidence. The vast majority of cases in Australia were people who contracted it abroad, or from a close contact who contracted it abroad. There's been relatively little community spread in Australia, even as we've progressed into the cooler autumn months. We've been in lockdown since mid March, but given that we now know the virus was quite prevalent in China even in December, and Australia only restricted travel from China in late January, it would have spread much more rapidly if it was going to. Other examples are Thailand and India, which have both had relatively little spread. Brazil may be a counter-example; it has had had a fairly severe outbreak even with fairly warm weather. So, I don't believe warm weather wipes out the virus altogether, but it does seem to significantly reduce spread. I wrote more about this last week here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23005189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23005189

taxicabjesus 6y ago

I don't know much about southern hemisphere's current SARS-CoV2 cases, but people everywhere are Vitamin-D deficient. Some recent research found that the old vitamin D recommendations were a fraction of what people actually need for optimal health [0]. Cities are particularly good at creating deficient populations. Human skin normally synthesizes vitamin D when exposed to ultraviolet light. People with darker skin need more sunlight to produce adequate vitamin D, which is presumably one of the main reasons why the super-virus' victims disproportionately have darker skin [1]. [0] The Big Vitamin D Mistake - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541280/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541280/ [1] COVID-19 ’ICU’ risk – 20-fold greater in the Vitamin D Deficient. BAME, African Americans, the Older, Institutionalised and Obese, are at greatest risk. Sun and ‘D’-supplementation – Game-changers? Research urgently required - https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1548/rr-6 https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1548/rr-6

tomhoward 6y ago

That's not in evidence. The vast majority of cases in Australia were people who contracted it abroad, or from a close contact who contracted it abroad. There's been relatively little community spread in Australia, even as we've progressed into the cooler autumn months. We've been in lockdown since mid March, but given that we now know the virus was quite prevalent in China even in December, and Australia only restricted travel from China in late January, it would have spread much more rapidly if it was going to. Other examples are Thailand and India, which have both had relatively little spread. Brazil may be a counter-example; it has had had a fairly severe outbreak even with fairly warm weather. So, I don't believe warm weather wipes out the virus altogether, but it does seem to significantly reduce spread. I wrote more about this last week here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23005189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23005189