Hacker News Reader

Comment by acqq | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

> 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com