
Patterns of Covid-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study - l_davis
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561#.XqWfqZvYqW0.twitter
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Cactus2018
>> the vitamin D hammer and influenza

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/)

> A colleague of mine and I have introduced vitamin D at doses that have
> achieved greater than 100 nmol/L in most of our patients for the past number
> of years, and we now see very few patients in our clinics with the flu or
> influenza like illness. In those patients who do have influenza, we have
> treated them with the vitamin D hammer, as coined by my colleague. This is a
> 1-time 50 000 IU dose of vitamin D3 or 10 000 IU 3 times daily for 2 to 3
> days. The results are dramatic, with complete resolution of symptoms in 48
> to 72 hours. One-time doses of vitamin D at this level have been used safely
> and have never been shown to be toxic.8 We urgently need a study of this
> intervention.

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anitil
> complete resolution of symptoms in 48 to 72 hours

Not to be glib, but isn't that about normal for the flu? The reason there's so
many folk remedies is that you'll generally recover after a couple of days and
attribute it to whatever you did in those days.

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Cactus2018
For average folks, sure. This study is for 'nursing home residents'.

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KarlKemp
Always a good idea to get some sun, so do get out more! Crucially, Vitamin D
gained via sunlight is significantly more effective for Vitamin D-related
health improvements than supplements.

...which kinda points to the problem here: Vitamin D aka getting sunlight aka
living an active life is almost impossible to control for.

Consider Bill Gates as an example for a healthy and active 65-year old man who
seems to be spending a lot of time outside, considering their perennial tan.
It would be perfectly believable for someone like that to have asthma, or
well-controlled diabetes, or have had a bout with cancer 15 years ago without
any of that having much of an impact on their daily lives.

Now consider an overweight, opiate-dependent patient of the same age, driving
their mobility scooter through wall-mart and otherwise not leaving their couch
much.

These two people are in the same category here except for Vitamin D levels.

It's also strange that the numbers do not seem to be representative of the
larger patient population. Death rates, especially, are far higher. This isn't
necessarily a problem, but it could be. One reason might be the limited
availability of patients with data on Vitamin D levels. If so, the immediate
suspicion is that testing depends on disease severity. Worst case, Vitamin D
testing was previously done for some subgroup of patients: for example, levels
might be routinely measured for lung cancer patients but not diabetics.

Finally, I'm somewhat suspicious of discretising the measurements into three
classes. This obviously throws away part of the data for no immediately
obvious reason. And intuitively, the difference between the two classes with
Vitamin D deficits seems somewhat low?

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jbotz
> Crucially, Vitamin D gained via sunlight is significantly more effective

Do you have any citations for that?

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cmrx64
I can't back that statement up but sunlight has a suite of other non-vitD-
synthesis effects too:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5086738/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5086738/)

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jbotz
That's a very interesting paper! It has long been my belief that sunshine is
good for you, and so long as you avoid an outright suburn, basically the more
the better. Even with respect to cancer alone, from what I've seen in the
literature over recent decades it seems undeniable that the reduced risk from
various common cancers like prostate and breast cancer far outweighs the
possible increased danger from skin cancer since melanoma is comparatatively
rare and carcinoma not very dangerous; but mostly this is ascribed to Vitamin
D and then taken as a recommendation for Vitamin D supplementation rather than
increasing sun exposure. The sun, the primary source of life's energy on
earth, remains mostly vilified by medical science.

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canada_dry
An earlier study [i] concluded " _Vitamin D insufficiency is highly prevalent
in severe COVID-19 patients._ "

[i]
[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075838v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075838v1)

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robotcookies
I've seen several studies finding similar patterns. I also notice the general
media has said nothing about this Vitamin D link.

Also interesting to note that African Americans have been hit very hard by
covid. This is also a group that is well documented as having higher rates of
Vitamin D deficiency. Generally people with darker skin living in higher
latitudes have greater D deficiency rates.

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pvaldes
Hum, Portugal, Japan, South Korea and China (with a really low deathrate for
their population), all eat lots of fish... many african countries and
australia have both lots of sun and depend on fish also for their diet.

Spain, eat lots of fish also... but maybe food served on hospital and home
retirement was not so equilibrated and many of those people were on other
medications that could break the intake before.

Is a promising idea

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npv789
indonesia people are smokers as well

[https://www.economist.com/science-and-
technology/2020/05/02/...](https://www.economist.com/science-and-
technology/2020/05/02/smokers-seem-less-likely-than-non-smokers-to-fall-ill-
with-covid-19)

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redis_mlc
I've spent a lot of time there.

Yes, the smoking culture is similar to the West in the 70's.

But more important, it's a very hot and humid country, so urban people do not
go outside to walk more than a block, and if they do, it's with long sleeves,
hijab, etc.

So they're not getting Vitamin D from sunlight in the larger cities.

