Hacker News Reader

Comment by cjbprime | Hacker News Reader

I suppose there's even a fourth option:

People who are more likely to be hospitalized are also more likely to be deficient in vitamin D.

The control group seemed to be a healthy population sample, but hospitals are not a pool of healthy people. How about a hospital sample instead of a population sample?

View on HN

Or maybe a 5th option: "People who are staying socially isolated spend less time in the sun, so the population has become more vitamin D deficient".

I know that I'm spending less time outdoors than I used to -- no more outdoor picnics/parties, no beach time this summer, I'm not even biking as much as I used to.

Or a 6th option: Over 80% of people have Vitamin D deficiency, and the incoming Covid-19 patient population was not different in this regard.

I don't know of any post-COVID studies, but most studies pre-COVID show around 40% of the population being deficient both in the USA and Europe.

This, and as someone who recently found out that they have a severe vitamin D deficiency, I was surprised to know that it's not something normally checked for in yearly blood tests.

Check the videos on Dr John Campbell's (PhD nurse educator in the UK) web site. The UK national health service has good medical records that can be cross-referenced and cross-linked every which way. Someone examined the historical records, found a reasonably large number of persons who had vitamin D levels checked before the pandemic, and checked those statistics vs the Covid-19 experience of the same people. (Imagine living in a country where that could happen.) IIRC, this did find some benefits wrt COVID-19 of not having a very low vitamin D level.

This isn't really a 7th option because it overlaps with some of the previously mentioned ones, but perhaps individuals who don't supplement with vitamin D are more likely to catch Covid-19 because they also don't take other precautions like wearing masks.

Anecdotally it seems those I know who are most concerned about Covid-19 know all about the possible link with vitamin D and are taking supplements while also being careful by wearing masks, sanitising etc.

Recently I keep seeing references to protecting oneself by wearing a mask.

When did the narrative shift from "wear a mask to limit transmission to others in case you might be infected and asymptomatic" to "wear a mask to protect yourself"?

Assuming we are talking about the usual surgical / cloth masks here (not N95 etc), is there any evidence that they protect the wearer?

We all know that mask wearing and the science (or lack of it) to support it has become ridiculously politicised, but I'm curious if there's any evidence behind this particular shift.

There is some weak evidence that wearing a cloth mask might protect yourself:

https://www.businessinsider.com/56-got-coronavirus-south-kor...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/21/8808322...

There were results from studies showing weak effects of self-protection even by "simple" surgical masks a few months ago.

Evidence seems to indicate there is such an effect - and contradicting the initial assumption that there isn't.

That would be incorrect. Even though the causal vector is unknown, the correlation is well established.

But that actually contradicts logic a bit.

I would expect those that are leaving their homes are both more exposed to sun/less deficient in vitamin D and also more likely to contract COVID.

And likewise, those that are staying home are more deficient, but less likely to contract COVID.

Unless social distancing in practice is not uniformly effective, and a large number of people both stay indoors to social distance, and are still quite likely to catch COVID because they are indoors with people who don't socially distance.

Plus being indoors means a confined space with less airflow, less air volume, and almost no upper range UV sunlight compared to being outdoors; these all are significant factors for likelihood of covid spreading.

Uhm, that seems a tad convoluted. Are you saying people that socially distance themselves are more likely to contract Covid-19 because the ones that don't are so often outside that they will contract it less probably?

And further, that's not the definition of social distancing. This would obviously include indoors. I won't sit at my kitchen table with the postman for a coffee while I am avoiding public gatherings.

I am sorry, my sarcasm-radar is quite broken. Are you joking?

How would this produce the study result?

Are people that isolate more likely to get hospitalized with Covid-19 than those that do not?

Maybe Vitamin D reduces all-cause hospitalization

Maybe beeing healthy and able to go outdoors reduces all-cause hospitalization (apart from accidents)

Or maybe low vitamin D levels are a symptom of the same "root cause" that leads to higher risk for Covid-19 and just supplementing vitamin D does not do anything to lower the latter.

Those vitamin D level statistics have been floating around for months. What's missing is a placebo-controlled study to see whether supplementation would make a difference. But that involves more than just clicking a bit of statistics.

That study is absolutely not missing, and it says exactly what you'd expect it to[0]. It's even being tested as an active treatment[1]. In fact, that study was also done with Influenza[2] and other lung borne ailments as well. It pretty obviously works, has tremendous explanatory power in the observed patterns of disease, and the fact that no government has sanctioned its use or its mass production ... well, I guess modernity kind of sucks. Better to pimp useless expensive garbage pharma companies can turn a profit on.

[0]https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04536298

[1] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04385940

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/#:~:tex....

Excellent, thank you.

Unfortunately, [0] and [1] are still ongoing and [2] reads like a blog post of somebody ranting about a statistical error, followed by some anecdotal evidence and the demand for an actual study. There could still be something there, but summarizing all of that as "quite obviously works" is stretching it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com