Wasn’t there a study a few years ago showing there is vitamin D deficiency in Taiwan? Any sign of sunlight for some…
Probably better than your CNN link.
Which one was that?
yes - there is. but a) they used 30ng/ml as reference (some studies use 20 or even lower!!!)
b) I couldn’t find any other country with less deficiency. And 28.9ng/ml on average is like 3-4 times what it’s in Europe in winter:
And sure - I think optimum is 50. But some governments are happy with 20 as minimum and see 50 as maximum (even though no negative effects can be found in any study below 100…)
So if someone finds a study showing less deficiency in old people in any developed country - I’m all ears.
here an overview over Europe/Middle East - but they did not specify the season: https://eje.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/eje/180/4/EJE-18-0736.xml
Take that vs Italy - were Children, who usually fare better - were 80% insufficient or deficient!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4243588/
Taiwan reacted great and early. I’m sure without acting - it would have spread last winter too (just like I believe it spread this winter slowly). But I simply think this is not enough. It was way less strict than New Zealand in the beginning.
My opinion is - 50% because of Vitamin D, 50% because of acting fast. But with Vitamin D deficiencies similar to Europe - it would be a similar mess right now here. There are reasons why Africa is not hit too bad - except South Africa. And that’s surely not because countries like Tanzania have any means to stop spreading the virus. Yes they are young- but unlike India or other countries people have much better Vitamin D levels (the normal before civilization is expected to have been 50ng/ml - that’s what they found in remote indigenous people).
One must be aware that China now has a different deficiency rating system for Vit D than many countries. They don’t agree with the standard cutoffs mentioned above…
Generally the further North in China the more deficiency was observed if I remember correctly.
Interestinghly In many studies South East Asian women also were rated to be quite deficient .
The whole story about Vit D deficiency is vastly overblown for so many diseases. You name it Alzheimers, Parkinson’s , Cancer…Everything has been linked to it. Quick research study, paper, publish…And forget about following up ever…Move on to next paper.
But what we have mostly found is that low total Vit D is a marker of early mortality if you already have a chronic disease. It means you are likely to expire younger . It’s more likely to be a result of the disease than the cause of it. And of course our Vit D levels drop naturally as we age.
And metastudies of Vit D supplementation have concluded that there is no observable benefit across the population.
I think if you look for a correlation with Vit D levels you can find with a subgroup of almost anything. The question is is that correlation you have observed just a random correlation or something that is repeatable and observable long term along with control studies.
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There is for cancer - but then many studies worked on D2 instead of D3, plus many studies looked at 400-600IU supplementation. That is bollocks as it has shown you would need about 4000IU to increase 20ng/ml…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31405892/
If you only look at studies with high Vitamin D dosage, there is relevance!
And here a metastudy about respiratory disesases. It was clearly effective for people with deficiencies:
https://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.i6583
Among those receiving daily or weekly vitamin D, protective effects were stronger in those with baseline 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels <25 nmol/L (adjusted odds ratio 0.30, 0.17 to 0.53) than in those with baseline 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels ≥25 nmol/L (adjusted odds ratio 0.75, 0.60 to 0.95; P for interaction=0.006). Vitamin D did not influence the proportion of participants experiencing at least one serious adverse event (adjusted odds ratio 0.98, 0.80 to 1.20, P=0.83). The body of evidence contributing to these analyses was assessed as being of high quality.
Conclusions Vitamin D supplementation was safe and it protected against acute respiratory tract infection overall. Patients who were very vitamin D deficient and those not receiving bolus doses experienced the most benefit.
And again - of course the caveat - they include all those rubbish studies with 400-600IU daily dosage. If you only look at studies with >2000IU per day - the results will be much more clear!
That’s not interesting - that’s the norm. They like white skin and run around with umbrella. Especially the chinese girls…
Their vitamin D levels are bottom low hiding from the sun wherever possible.
And then take those studies away - were they looked at the Vitamin D level of people 17 years ago - in order to determine that it doesn’t influence covid-19. That’s just laughable anyone ever has the guts to research/publish such a thing.
But yes - interesting to see how low China is in comparison with Taiwan:
I guess Taiwan is not so deficient - because so many people here are Han immigrant - now they get more sun here than on average where they came from in China historically… Taiwan is much further South than the average latitude in China. Plus maybe some other factors…
But the mean Vitamin D status in Taiwan is kinda like the upper 10% in China…
Here is the IMHO most underrated website regarding Covid-19 treatment and studies:
you can switch to other medications and relevant studies. Now please tell me how Vitamin D is not a super relevant factor.
Treatment
↓75%
92% of studies report positive effects. 75% improvement from meta analysis, p=0.00012.
Sufficiency
↓50%
96% of studies report positive effects.
So it’s only fair to assume - that because of the very small number of Vitamin D deficient people in Taiwan - R could be reduced by 50%. Now that likely is enough with some little measures to combat Covid-19. Little measures needed in winter. In summer likely not (because in summer even in Europe with nearly no measures - R was clearly below 2). Just my opinion based on reading most of those studies…
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Death rates can be misleading to judge the current health of a nation- for example Philippines has a death rate currently at around 6 per 1000, almost 50% lower than that of the UK. Does this mean that they have much better health outlook or much lower day-to-day risk of mortality?
The mortality rate today is dependent on population dynamics over the past 100 years, including birth rates over time, changes in health, life expectancy, migration, etc. To put it very crudely, say, assuming a life expectancy of 80 years, the number of deaths today is the number of births 80 years ago, so the mortality rate is effectively comparing the current population with the birth rate 80 years ago. Now, there is obviously many more factors, but I don’t think it is valid to use 1940’s mortality rate as a benchmark for the rate last year.
Not nearly as misleading as the absolute death count. Given stable and trustworthy institutions, I would suggest numbers like deaths and population count are pretty solid. Deaths in particular. Are you suggesting the UK’s method of tallying the population and registering deaths is as random as in the Philippines?
I agree. Which is why I dismiss simplistic measures like raw death rates. The ONS will release an Age-Adjusted Death Rate sometime this year, which attempts to capture some of the information you mention. When they do, we’ll have a better idea of the impact of COVID-19.
However, the fact that we even need to wait for more information to get a true picture suggests that the impact of the disease has been vastly overblown. Truly apocalyptic pandemics stick out like a totem pole.
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Here’s the ONS ASMR chart to 2019. As of mid-August (which, of course, takes in the April/May surge but not the December one) the ASMR for 2020 was 1102.
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I’m not suggesting the difference in numbers is due to under-reporting, as to do so by such a huge amount would lead to divergence in recorded populations statistics. I’m suggesting that the mortality rate at a given time is not just dependent on the day-to-day risk of mortality at that time, but is a function of demographic changes spanning back decades.
As a theoretical example, take two populations with the same life expectancy, but different birth rates, the population with the higher birth rate would have a lower mortality rate despite exactly the same health outlook. This is as the denominator in the mortality rate grows much faster in the population with higher birth rate.
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The reporting of this is nothing short of scaremongering. The BBC headline is now ’ Covid: 2020 saw most excess deaths since World War Two’.
The year 1940 has now been replaced with WW2 (just to hammer the point home), and the inference most people will take from that headline is that the UK death rate is now the highest for 80 years.
Which is not the case.
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Yeah but it is significantly more excess deaths than last year. Which folks were vehemently denying was going to be the case a few posts back.
It appears there are more deaths based on the charts presented, not sure how you infer these were “excess” deaths. There are far too many other factors at play to say the higher death rate was due to Covid 19. At a minimum, what was the expected number of deaths?
Average life expectancy in England is around 80, was there a significant increase in births in the late 30’s, early 40’s that would mean an increased number of people were “due” to die last year?
Will we see a significant reduction in deaths from old age next year due to a Covid related early cull? How many of the 2020 deaths were due to people not being able to receive proper medical treatment due to Covid lockdowns?
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Because we can count the deaths from covid and they were a lot. Then compare the total deaths per year over the last five years or just against last year ?
Whatever you want to call them buddy. THERES A VERY SIGNIFICANT 13.7% SPIKE…YOU EXPLAIN WHAT CAUSED IT IF NOT COVID.
People are staying at home so there are less traffic accidents… Why didn’t you mention that ? There is almost no influenza …a major annual killer…Why didn’t you mention that ?
If you are going to make up some bullshit about lockdown killing a hundred thousand people in the UK make a fickibg effort to explain how !
Some people don’t want to admit that covid has killed a lot of people for whatever reason.
People are not culled , what’s with your offensiVe language ?
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Not accurate, in my position.
My argument is that the additional deaths from covid do not warrant causing the following:
increased unemployment and worsening economic prospects
widening in social divide, increased upshift in wealth towards the elite
removal of individuals rights
hampering education of children & other students
increasing mental stress and illness
enforcing loneliness and isolation
What on earth have we done to our society?
And when will it end? There’s already talk of restrictions next winter.
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