And programmers seem more likely to spend their time indoors, and therefore more likely to be vitamin-D-deficient without supplementation.
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.
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.
See also the op-ed just posted to MedPage Today, and posted separately here on HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25680373
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?
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.
All prior high-quality evidence disputed the claim:
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
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.
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.
The blog post also reaches a semi-hard lined conclusion yet still leaves room for additional work as it should.
Problems with the study:
- Not everyone the participants are interacting with also have a mask (Blog post references this with "protects you, not me")
- The result is "Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection."
- "The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use."
My point is "Masks are in effective" can't be concluded from this. It failed to show a reduction of 50%, sure, but what about 25% at a higher CI? Was it literally 0% at 5 sigma? Clearly more work needs to be done to show 0% at any meaningful CI.
If you don't believe in masks fine, don't go see other people - it's way more effective anyway.
Also the fact that mask mandates are poorly enforced, or that masks arent a replacement for other forms of prevention, or that some materials dont offer the same level of prevention dont change the fact that masks work
This summer, the state of Kansas did an (inadvertent) infield experiment where some counties implemented mask mandates and other counties did not. After a few week, the non-mask mandate counties infection rates increased rapidly. The mask mandate counties’ infection rate increased on slightly.
Whether vitamin D has any effect is still very much unknown.
I hope some bored science writer someday makes a book compiling and critiquing some of the ridiculous "studies" that got written during the pandemic.
I appreciated the linked article's subtle shade-throwing:
> As for Vitamin D administration to hospitalized COVID-19 patients reducing ICU admission, the best one can say about the Córdoba study is that nothing can be learned from it.
http://compbio.mit.edu/calcifediol/Response_to_Pachter_criti...
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.
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.
