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It is worth noting that living in a sunny country does not guarantee the larger population receiving adequate Vitamin D through sun exposure, as many such populations somewhat paradoxically avoid sun exposure, as there are legitimate health reasons for doing so (extreme heat, concerns about skin cancer, etc.).

To support that you'd have to show that Italians have order of magnitudes higher deficiency than most of Nordic countries, and I don't think it is possible.

Another country with equivalent sun exposure to Italy is Greece, again orders of magnitude less deaths (like Germany). They also had strong lockdowns and early enough.

It's the measures. Analyzing what happened in Europe (and still happens) can't be explained with anything else.

Compare it with fires. Small fires are easy to extinguish. Pretending "it will go away" will simply result in a big fires. Eventually there won't be anything to burn. With people, eventually everybody who can and "feels the heat" will try to protect themselves.

A lot of older people in Sweden stay in their homes and take care not to be infected. Masks are common in the supermarkets, etc.

> Masks are common in the supermarkets, etc.

Not sure where you got this information - masks are not commonly worn at all in Sweden. I see perhaps 1 mask per week, unless I go into the city center, then I might see 10 in a day.

The Swedish public health authorities are not currently recommending general usage of face masks, citing mainly the lack of evidence of the effectiveness of general mask usage (wearing a mask can cause you to get lulled into a false sense of security, for example).

See https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utb...

(in Swedish, unfortunately)

> To support that you'd have to show that Italians have order of magnitudes higher deficiency than most of Nordic countries, and I don't think it is possible.

Sweden adds vitamin D to food items so I wouldn't be surprised if Sweden has less vitamin D deficiency than many southern countries.

https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2015/05/28/Sweden-t...

Can we find order of magnitude difference among darker skinned people? We've all heard about the disparity there.

> Masks are common in the supermarkets, etc.

This is outright false. I've been to a big supermarket twice this week and didn't see a single mask as far as I can recall.

yes, masks are marginal at best, and as long as you're not spending a lot of time breathing another's direct exhaust, even indoors, you're at negligibly low risk of transmission.

i get super frustrated with the random corona rules at supermarkets in the US (like one-way only aisles, exit only doors), especially trader joe's, which is as draconian as it is arbitrary. for a while they weren't allowing you to take in your reusable grocery bags. later they relented and switched to just bagging your own groceries outdoors, leading to an awkward triple handling of your purchased items for what amounts to nothing other than safety theater.

for 6 months i've worn the same useless surgical mask to play my part in that misguided spectacle, when required. folks are slowly starting to realize their lack of utility, but have nothing else to latch onto because the obvious solution of modest distancing seems so mundanely unbelievable (and lacking obvious and spectacular conformance).

For reference, see this article in the Lancet:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8...

It's just an argument that the actual deficiency could cause worse outcome. But that article in Lancet doesn't claim that Italy had Vitamin D deficient population. The number of deaths per capita due to Covid-19 was however orders of magnitude higher in Italy and Sweden than in Germany. I don't think that there's anywhere any evidence that Germans are less Vitamin D deficient than Italians and Germans.

Vitamin D doesn't explain anything related to Covid-19 deaths in Europe, whereas the existence or lack of measures do, almost perfectly. Whoever can look at the curves of number of deaths since the begin of the epidemics, check the times of partial lockdowns or the introduction of some measures, can see that exactly around three weeks after these the curves stop going up and begin going down.

Italy as the first country seriously hit in Europe had the curve raising exponentially up until the measures started to work (there's a delay -- for people to stop dying the spread of infection has to turn first etc). Sweden also had the curve raising comparably to Italy, even if they had a negative example from Italy -- because there was a decision of targeting the "herd immunity". Germany's curve remained very low, as they had low prevalence at the time their measures started to be applied.

It's all about the measures and the adherence of the people to them.

Many countries have Vitamin D deficient populations, including Italy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5986426/

In Italy, it gets worse the older the population gets.

It is also an issue in Germany: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4499202/

I make no claims other than: 1) there is a very strong correlation between vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency and poor outcomes for COVID-19, and 2) many populations, including those in sunny countries, suffer from widespread vitamin D insufficiency.

I for one have been taking 1,000 IUs of vitamin D every day since March, and trying to get sun exposure mid-day whenever I can.

Look at the graph, it has obviously nothing to do with any deficiencies, and everything to do with the measures:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

The comparison is possible because it’s per million. See Italy and Spain hit before they were aware what is going on., then introducing lockdowns.

See Sweden’s and the US denial, then limiting the initial outbreaks but continuing just not doing enough.

See Greece and Germany doing early enough good enough measures, and still doing it.

It’s that simple. The US not being aware how wrong they are doing is a crime to their own people. It’s historical failure.

You claim: “there is a very strong correlation between vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency and poor outcomes for COVID-19“ — show me that on the graph above. It’s obviously a red herring talking about Vitamin D once one sees it.

India being the case in point where exposed skin is culturally unacceptable

> Sweden is particularly bad, having the deaths per capita even worse than the U.S. the last time I've checked.

No. USA: 608 per million. Sweden: 580. [1]

But the current trajectory is also important. In Sweden, the last day with more than 0.6 deaths/million was July 21 (according to actual date of death, not the date when death was reported), while the US currently is about 2-3 deaths/million/day.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

People really see what they want to see. As a Swede this whole pandemic has been truly enlightening regarding peoples propensity for confirmation bias. It has been truly shocking how prevalent it is throughout entire societies and ideologies.

Here in Sweden the right-wing folks want to lock everything down and the left-wing want to keep deferring it to the experts. In the rest of the world it seems to be the other way around.

Another way of looking at it: the left-wing people everywhere want to defer to the experts. It's just that the experts in different places are saying different things.

Can you provide some articles/material regarding right wingers wanting to lock things down in Sweden? I'm not familiar with Swedish politics and would be interested in reading more.

Throughout the pandemic the (neo-)Liberal (right-wing by Swedish standards) newspaper Dagens Nyheter (Today's News, dn.se) have led a campaign criticising the Swedish lax approach. The news site is paywalled however.

The leader of the Swedish Democrats, the most right-wing in the Swedish parliament, called for the state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnells, to take responsibility and resign immediately: https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/jimmie-akesson-tegnell-mast...

Interesting enough it's also the same kind of fringe-right that are protesting in against restrictions in Germany that is calling our approach genocidal here:

"Tegnell is a danger to society" https://projektsanning.com/2020/03/12/coronaviruset-statsepi...

"Tegnell reported to the Police due to the mass death among elderly" https://www.friatider.se/tegnell-polisanmald-massdoden-bland...

The debate is pretty calm compared to USA, most politicians agree with the general strategy so the opposition mostly criticize the execution.

https://www.thelocal.se/20200530/swedish-opposition-demands-...

I wish this complete upside-down debate would get more attention in international media but it's truly the reverse of what's happening in the US.

While the official stance for all parties is that they support the strategy (the most right-wing party being the exception who is heavily criticizing it), it's more telling in social media.

Hanif Bali, one of the most prominent right-wing figures in social media, has really been pushing for lockdowns/masks and is cheered on by his tail of alt-right followers. Meanwhile the left is mocking him, lockdowns and masks in general.

Sweden has 5x deaths of Germany. Not quite an order of magnitude. And as someone else pointed out, the US has more deaths per capita than Sweden.

> the US has more deaths per capita than Sweden

Nothing to be proud about for either of them. Anyway, until e.g. month ago Sweden had the lead.

Just checked: it seems the last day the U.S. was better than Sweden in deaths per capita was 11. September, so just 8 days ago. And, when the trends continue, in a week the U.S. will be worse than the U.K. too. The only countries in Europe with more Covid-19 deaths per million then will be Belgium and Spain.

If I recall correctly the US passed Sweden in excess mortality sometime in June/July. So they have probably passed some of the other European countries already. I couldn't find a good up to date source, but Belgium seems to have lower excess than US. Comparing death statistics is not trivial.

Anyways, I don't think comparing the US to most countries in Europe really makes sense, considering the size and population differences.

> If I recall correctly the US passed Sweden in excess mortality sometime in June/July.

According to ourworldindata, in reported Covid-19 deaths per million, on Sept 12:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

> I don't think comparing the US to most countries in Europe really makes sense

You are missing "per million" which is what I used. Comparing absolute numbers has of course no sense. When comparing relative numbers ("per million"), the big country spread across big area, like U.S. is, would be expected have huge advantages compared to any country in Europe (due to slower spread over the distances, much less dependency on public transportation). Moreover, the countries worst hit in Europe were only those where the spread happened first -- others took note and introduced measures early enough. Not the U.S. which totally botched its response even ignoring the initial hit in NY. Compare the slopes of all other European countries for months, v.s. what's going on in the U.S. The response in the U.S. is criminally bad, and continues to be so -- and not looking at the "cases" but simply and tragically, deaths. Those that are reported.

I admit that comparing some other estimates of "excess deaths" could give some other numbers, but I don't see any way in which U.S. can look good, especially as it was Italy being hit the first and everybody else having the time to react somehow.

Also see daily average of deaths per million, to get the idea how bad it is still:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...

5x is order of magnitude larger. Quote:

Generally, the order of magnitude of a number is the smallest power of 10 used to represent that number.[2] To work out the order of magnitude of a number N, the number is first expressed in the following form:

    N = a × 10^b

where 1/sqrt(10) ≤ a < sqrt(10) . Then, b represents the order of magnitude of the number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude

I said the interplay of chronic disease, vitamin-d and vulnerable populations.