11 ms·
Over 100 Scientists and Doctors Call for Increased Vitamin D to Combat Covid-19
- kpfleger 6y ago185 experts. Over 100 medical doctors. Roughly 100 professors, including many of the most respected vitamin D experts in the world---check out the list of names and qualifications yourself. Please read the link before posting about correlation or other opinions on the topic. The point is to note the aggregate credibility of the backers here. This is analogous to the open letter done for face masks last spring.
- fareesh 6y agoIsn't there a similarly sized letter asking for the regulator to look into their findings for Ivermectin?
- kpfleger 6y agoThe FLCCC has been pushing Ivermectin, but I am not aware of an open letter analogous to this one or the similar one for masks that is signed by 100+ doctors & scientists. I have not personally read the Ivermectin literature, but I think the FLCCC's methodology is good. (Paul Marik of FLCCC is a signatory on this vitamin D letter, BTW.) But it's notable that no one has Ivermectin deficiency, whereas more than half of people have insufficient vitamin D, especially in winter, so increased D intake is justified even in the absence of this COVID19 pandemic.
- fareesh 6y agoNot an open letter - but a manuscript of 30ish studies - I assumed there were probably ~3 doctors on each study.
- irq11 6y agoThe open letter for face masks is a great example for why this kind of thing is dubious. All prior high-quality evidence disputed the claim: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/special-ep-masks https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/specia... The subsequent evidence of real-world effectiveness isn’t great: cases are skyrocketing around the northern hemisphere, and mask mandates aren’t making a difference. The only randomized controlled trial ever conducted for masks and covid was not able to detect any protective effect, yet was rejected from multiple journals because of “consensus”: https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/vinay-prasad/89778 https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/vinay-prasad/89778 Science by signature count isn’t science; it’s a popularity contest. It’s perfectly fine to advocate for a belief, but nobody should pretend that they have the “scientific” argument simply because their signature list is longer.
- jiofih 6y ago> cases are skyrocketing And comments like yours are one of the reasons. The study shows that masks do little to protect the wearer - which is kind of obvious as it’s not going to filter incoming air very efficiently, that has never been the purpose of surgical masks. They don’t protect against airborne pathogens and every medical professional knows it. You need a crítica mass for masks to start reducing transmission rates. Mask use is nowhere near what it should have been, so you cannot take any conclusions out of that.
- irq11 6y ago> Mask use is nowhere near what it should have been All available evidence shows that you’re wrong. Self-reported mask usage rates are over 90%, nationwide. Moreover, many of the places with the highest compliance rates (e.g. Los Angeles) have the fastest-growing case counts: https://delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast/?date=20201018&signalType=value&mode=overview&sensor=fb-survey-smoothed_wearing_mask&level=state https://delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast/?date=20201018&signalType=v... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/23/pandemic-data-chart-masks/%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/business... https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943e4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943e4.htm
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoBecause population density and culture are the other factors. In most cases, combined with limiting large groups and reducing the frequency of meetings, it is doing what it is intended to do - reduce the R0 factor. Even in LA. Every Internet pundit who can take one number and divide by another, announces they have proven something or other. Give it a rest.
- irq11 6y agoThere’s always an excuse, but there’s never any data backing your claims. Provide even a single shred of evidence that masks affect the R0 of the virus in the real world. Modeling studies and correlations observed in April don’t count: most of the papers published this year looked at areas where case counts subsequently skyrocketed in the fall. My personal favorite is the mask study from Jena, Germany in the spring, which only made it into a journal right as cases were reaching an all-time high in the same area: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/12/02/2015954117 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/12/02/2015954117 https://gesundheit.jena.de/en/coronavirus https://gesundheit.jena.de/en/coronavirus
- mc32 6y agoWait... A few months ago people laughed at the suggestion. It was "dangerous" to "deceive" people about Vit D and Covid. Wasn't Twitter suppressing this too? How do they punish themselves for misinformation? Now it comes out. I wonder how many other things will come to light.
- kpfleger 6y agoThis has been a big problem. Some people labeled science on vitamin D & covid19 as misinformation, lumping vitamin D in with things that have little to no evidence even when the vitamin D evidence was mounting rapidly. Part of the point of this open letter is to show that many serious people agree that vitamin D should be used in the pandemic. The inappropriate suppression of this message is now the mis-information. This should be clear from reading the letter and its very few references carefully. See also the op-ed just posted to MedPage Today, and posted separately here on HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25680373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25680373
- teorema 6y agoThe problem IMHO is the attempt to regulate speech on the topic (or any topic really). It just illustrates the problems with it. I'm a little concerned about the appeal to authority element to this all...
- WalterGR 6y ago> A few months ago people laughed at the suggestion. It was "dangerous" to "deceive" people about Vit D and Covid. Who? Doctors or people on the internet? > Wasn't Twitter suppressing this too? I don't know. Were they? By "too" do you mean the unidentified people above? > How do they punish themselves for misinformation? How do they punish themselves for insinuations of possibly suppressing something? > Now it comes out. I wonder how many other things will come to light. Such as what?
- funcDropShadow 6y ago> > A few months ago people laughed at the suggestion. It was "dangerous" to "deceive" people about Vit D and Covid. > Who? Doctors or people on the internet? Last automn, I asked a medical doctor about Vitamin D and CoVid19 and he told me that he gets a lot of emails about news in medicine, and that he deletes everything that mentions Vitamin D, because some claims about Vitamin D were refuted in the '90s. I was suprised to say the least.
- tmcw 6y agoHacker news is fixated on the Vitamin D hypothesis. 142 posts in the last year, many hitting the front page.
- King-Aaron 6y agoI wonder if it correlates to Joe Rogan's fixation on Vitamin D
- deathlight 6y agoSteve Gibson has also been on the vit D train for some time predating covid.
- mark-r 6y agoThe HN crowd is fascinated by simple but effective "hacks". This appears to be one.
- tasogare 6y agoDo we have an idea of low the death rate of covid is when the vitamin D deficiency is fixed?
- kpfleger 6y agoJust how much lower it would get cannot be discerned from available data yet. It is very hard to believe from current data that it would go all the way to zero and also very hard to believe that fixing all vitamin D deficiency would not save any lives. The confidence interval range in between is still large, but it is absolutely (past) time to act on the data because it is so unlikely to not help (or even not help a lot). And the data is so far consistent with the possibility that it could help so much that it would have reduced the pandemic to no worse than prior flu seasons had everyone's vitamin D been brought up above 30ng/ml before SARS-CoV-2 arrived.
- bpodgursky 6y agoThe rest of the world is fascinated by simple but effective "hacks" like wearing a mask. There are a lot of simple hacks that end up being real.
- jupiter90000 6y agoWorth a read, more in depth analysis of some of these studies: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/mathematical-analysis-of-mathematical-analysis-of-a-vitamin-d-covid-19-trial/ https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/mathematical-an...
- incrudible 6y agoI have doubts about some of these "mask wearing" studies too. I'm still wearing a mask. I'm still taking Vitamin D. These are low-risk interventions. I'm not going to wait for some p value to get smaller to take action.
- jupiter90000 6y agoNothing is stopping anyone from doing what they think makes sense to them -- scientific studies should still be just that though, following sound principles to be able to draw realistic conclusions. If we use flawed studies to convince others that something is true, that doesn't seem fine to me.
- incrudible 6y agoMost studies are flawed. We don't know that Vitamin D works. We also don't know that it doesn't work. Therefore, we need to consider either possibilities. Given that it is such a low-risk intervention, even a 99% chance that Vitamin D doesn't work would make supplementing worthwhile.
- jupiter90000 6y agoNo offense, but this logic makes no sense to me. It's like, most studies are flawed so let's try random things I saw on the internet in hopes they might help. I don't get it. Don't really care if someone takes Vitamin D but don't get this argument/logic. That's ok, I'll move on.
- incrudible 6y ago
- hikerclimb 6y agoHopefully this doesn’t work.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- matthewmorgan 6y agoGet everyone back to their right latitude won't be any need for all this fuss
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoI mean - there's more truth to this than people want to admit. It's a harsh way to phrase that it's practically abusive to make people live at certain latitudes where they can't absorb the amount of sun that creates vitamin-d adequate for their body. Of course the way to combat this is just identifying deficiency and prescribing the right amount.
- matthewmorgan 6y agoSunlight activates hundreds of genes, do you think vitamin d is the only variable in this equation?
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoNo but it seems close enough
- raziel2701 6y agoTime to chug some milk.
- nradov 6y agoThis site has a fairly complete index of all the studies about vitamin D and COVID-19. The total weight of evidence is now quite strong. https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/ https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoI mean we know vitamin-D is related to improved immunity and seemingly a whole host of other benefits. We also know obesity and other chronic illness associated with diet is a horrific risk factor for covid. Why in the hell haven't these options been blared across every channel and drilled into our minds? If you're concerned about dying, enough to jail yourself in your house for a year, how about put down the freaking donut and get some sunshine.
- ykevinator 6y agoI don't see a source link
- bandana 6y agoAnybody from the "stay the f* at home" crowd want to chime in ? How do I make vitamin D when it is illegal/frowned at to be outside ?
- bagacrap 6y agoorder supplements on Amazon? The uv index is very low this time of year anyway, so sun exposure doesn't do much.
- throwaway201103 6y agoYeah I wouln't trust Amazon for supplements. Your local pharmacy or grocery store can probably deliver it or have it available for contact-less pickup.
- elisaado 6y ago>Yeah I wouln't trust Amazon for supplements. why?
- Doxin 6y agoProbably because Amazon is at this point well known for shipping counterfit products. That's dangerous when it concerns phone chargers. It's downright negligent for supplements if you ask me.
- herbst 6y agoSuppliment maker/seller here. I agree, its a surprisingly shady business. However many store/drogery brands too have their flaws. Big brand suppliments often contain cheaper chemical alternatives, while smaller brands sometimes really care about the actual source product. Its hard honestly. Thats why i am making my own.
- stunt 6y agoI have no way to judge. But I know the normal recovery rate for COVID19 is high. I also know a lot of patients are advised to take Vitamin-D supplement now. So it's hard to say if Vitamin-D is really helping or not without proper test on large group of patients with same validation methods that they use for vacines.
- denton-scratch 6y agoOver a million scientists and doctors decline to make that call.
- sizzle 6y agoHow credible is vitaminforall.org? Never heard of it...
- kpfleger 6y agoThe site itself was set up (by me) just to host this open letter, just as the site masks4all.co was set up to host the similar open letter that happened for masks in the spring. The credibility isn't of the site itself but of the signatories of the site, which are listed plainly (with any conflicts of interest). Look through the list yourself to judge their credibility.
- sizzle 6y agoThanks for the explanation, I'll look into the sources which you cited so the credibility was very apparent, just not the domain which you've cleared up for me.