Early on in the lockdown I noticed that these vitamins were among the kind of weird items completely cleared out of stores.
People were very selective... initially all FHD laptops and Chromebooks were gone, along with power strips, ibuprofen, hair clippers, etc.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7189189/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3308600/#:~:tex....
1. Vitamin D as a side effect of sun exposure is not itself the important indicator. Instead, some other biological response increases immune response simultaneously. Hence, D supplementation is itself copying the wrong response.
2. Vitamin D deficiency is caused by illness, hence it actually doesn't affect mortality and the relationship is not casual.
Don't screw around with sun protection. Despite what the internet says, people who work outside get it too.
I saw a statistic/study from China that found that only 1 in 7000 cases were exposed outdoors. The link could be as simple as people who spend a lot of time indoors get more exposure to the virus.
The only real action you can glean from that isn't to take supplements, it's don't do what caused those people to be vitamin D deficient which is usually staying indoors.
Maybe it's the vitamin D, maybe it isn't.
The problem with that is there are a million reasons Vitamin D might correlate to better outcomes even if it's just a total co-incidence - generally healthy people might spend more time in the sun, health-conscious people might be more likely to take vitamins, other conditions may cause a lack of Vitamin D, etc. There's no proof that supplementing would actually improve outcomes.
This is the first study I've seen that claims to show directly that a supplement given during a hospital stay directly improved outcomes. It's a tiny study, but interesting and hopefully leads to more studies.
I haven't heard much about B12 or magnesium effectiveness, as I must admit being out of contact, but they are popular supplements even in non covid times.
Powerstrips are necessary for makeshift home offices which are now everywhere. Hairclippers are important for people who regularly like haircuts. I usually go months, but know plenty of people who go weekly or bi-monthly.
Even without research saying vitamins have an impact on this disease, I think people would be grabbing anything with the potential to help (vitamins and certain medicines).
The parent commenter seemed to indicate buying Chromebooks, powerstrips, and vitamins to require secretive information when all of these things make sense (like Nintendo Switch's becoming rarer with millions of bored people in quarantine).
Yes. See for example this video from John Campbell from March 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5yVGmfivAk
Metanalyses have shown that Vitamin D supplementation is associated with a reduction in the rate of upper respiratory tract infections and its severity.