Navajo Nation and Other Native American Reservations Hit Hard by Covid-19

Huh? That doesn't sound right.... and indeed looking at your source it isn't... but in some sense it looks like it might actually be worse than that

> Indigenous people accounted for 27.8% of all hospital admissions reported to PHAC during the first wave, but only 6.1% of hospital admissions during the second wave (Helferty et al., 2010).

Less than a third of hospitalizations were indigenous people (both genders), it seems, and later

> Rolland Harris et al. (2012), for example, found that Indigenous women accounted for 16.2% of hospitalized cases, [... continued below]

So indigenous women are 1/6th of hospitalizations (which makes sense with 1/3rd of hospitalization being indigenous people). But

> [... direct continuation of previous quote] 18.2% of ICU cases, and 50% of fatalities attributed to H1N1 influenza of those reporting ethnicity across Canada when both waves of the pandemic were combined.

Indigenous women were half of the total deaths???

I feel like something weird must be going on with these statistics.

Additionally, native nations in fact have tried to set their own lockdown and travel policies. State governments have threatened them for doing so.[1]

[0]. "For Native Americans, Health Care Is A Long, Hard Road Away" - https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/13/4738483...

[1]. "'I’m protecting my people': Tribal citizens defend coronavirus checkpoints amid threat from state" - https://www.indianz.com/News/2020/05/11/im-protecting-my-peo...

Reservations basically operate with only the local government. Imagine your town trying to source all the required goods themselves while there's a supply shortage.

It's also not like the nation can just isolate from the rest of the country. Much of the nation lives and/or works off of the reservation in nearby towns and cities. Bear in mind that by-and-large, the Navajo are not living a traditional subsistence lifestyle anymore. They simply don't have the land or resources to do that so the reservations are not self-sufficient.

My mother-in-law works at a hospital adjacent to a large reservation. They're treating large numbers of natives.

She says people from the reservation refuse to practice any social distancing or wear PPE.

Yes, they do have their own lockdown policies. On a drive in western NC this past month, we had to turn around as the Qualla Boundary was blocked by tribal police.

"There is no strong scientific evidence to show that very high intakes (ie, mega supplements) of vitamin D will be beneficial in preventing or treating COVID-19."

https://youtu.be/4_ZJ8YDOX6g?t=1771

Vitamin D insufficiency has been strongly correlated to COVD-19 deaths and severe symptoms in various locations, although obviously more data is still needed to prove causation.

Either way unless you work outside you should probably be on 5000 IU of Vitamin D a day just to compensate for sunlight deprivation.

It might be a strong factor - this isn't yet demonstrated conclusively by enough peer reviewed studies yet, so it shouldnt be described as conclusive. Thankfully, there a long history of vitamin D supplementation, so unlike hydroxychloroquine, it isn't likely to increase death rates. At worst it might just do nothing.

Also, a number of common foods contain or are supplemented with vitamin D. Assuming that somebody has no fundamental issues with vitamin D absorption from food, a typical healthy diet that includes some of those foods should be sufficient to keep a person out of vitamin D deficiency, with no pill-based supplement needed.

The Navajo have been in the general area (the US forcibly moved them, but the latitudes are similar) of where they are now for a long time. Their skin tone should be well-adapted to the region, unless they're not going outside.