It’s always gratifying to see others thinking along the same lines as I have been. In this case shrink Vatsal G. Thakkar muses in this Wall Street Journal op-ed about the role Vitamin D might play in explaining disparities:
Black Americans are dying of Covid-19 at a higher rate than whites. Socioeconomic factors such as gaps in access to health care no doubt play a role. But another possible factor has been largely overlooked: vitamin D deficiency that weakens the immune system.
Researchers last week released the first data supporting this link. They found that the nations with the highest mortality rates—Italy, Spain and France—also had the lowest average vitamin D levels among countries affected by the pandemic.
Vitamin D is produced by a reaction in the skin to the ultraviolet rays in sunlight. Many Americans are low in vitamin D, but those with darker skin are at a particular disadvantage because melanin inhibits the vitamin’s production. As an Indian-American, my skin type is Fitzpatrick IV, or “moderate brown.†Compared with my white friends, I need double or triple the sun exposure to synthesize the same amount of vitamin D, so I supplement with 5,000 international units of vitamin D3 daily, which maintains my level in the normal range. Most African-Americans are Fitzpatrick type V or VI, so they would need even more.
This requires further study, but earlier research is suggestive. In 2018 a longitudinal study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital looked at whether vitamin D supplementation had any health benefits, specifically in regard to heart disease and cancer. The overall conclusion was that it didn’t, for most people. Yet buried in the results was one that should have made headlines: Vitamin D supplementation in African-Americans reduced cancer risk 23%. How? Cancer cells develop regularly in most animals, including humans, as the result of toxic injuries or glitches in DNA replication, but a healthy immune system destroys them. There is evidence that low vitamin D levels make the immune system go blind.
The need to treat different people differently may not be fair but it’s real. A major dietary source of Vitamin D supplementation is in milk and other dairy products and blacks tend to avoid those because so many are lactose intolerant (75-95%). As Dr. Thakkar points out, it’s worth investigating.
Could be true. Worth studying. Remember my theory. All studies involving diets are wrong until proven otherwise. Even then they are probably wrong and someone will figure out why later.
Steve
Oh no! The return of the late night radio shows pushing Vitamin ‘D’ supplements because 10 gallons a day of fortified milk and 24/7 exposure to the tropical sun won’t get you near enough of that compound to keep you alive, much less prevent rickets!
The only diet that’s guaranteed to make you lose weight is starvation. It sucks and worse you’re hungry all the time (at least until you become to weak to care).
On a serious note, we know so little about it the situation why not check it out. As long as the studies don’t turn into a federal project.
The naysaying quotient is running high. Is there a real cost to taking a good, bioavailable Vitamin D supplement? It seems small.
I think Tars is on target here, though. As long as it doesn’t become a federal project, or corporate subsidy. Now THAT’s a risk.
You realize Vitamin D was a fad a few years ago right? I got tested at my check up and was told I needed Vitamin D. A year later multiple studies came out and debunked the need for all of the extra Vitamin D we were taking.
https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/healthcare-triage-news-vitamin-d-supplements-continue-to-be-unnecessary/
Steve
Of course vitamin D. Ties right into reduced dairy consumption nationwide. A FEMA program to purchase and distribute fluid milk to the hardest hit areas is needed. Increasing in size and scope until the scourge of disease is ended.
Seriously, the unpredictability of co-19 symptoms
And test results not making sense does lead one to speculate co-19 does not equal illness, rather that co-19 + x or -x does.
Sheltering at home doesn’t help in building up Vitamin D.
Steve; That was why I made the snarky remark about the late night ads. At the time I was doing a lot of driving in the early AM, and several of rock stations I would normally listen to would instead have those damned Vitamin D infomercials on, which pissed me off.
And now for the next leadfoil hat conspiracy theory:
‘Professor Luc Montagnier, a central member of the team that identified HIV during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, is now bucking the media consensus on the novel coronavirus by claiming the pathogen was at least partially edited in a laboratory.
According to research performed by Montagnier, a Nobel Prize winner, and his mathematician partner Jean-Claude Perez, SARS-CoV-2 contains sequences of the human immunodeficiency virus — HIV.’
http://www.westernjournal.com/doctor-discovered-hiv-confident-covid-19-created-lab/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=WJBreaking&utm_campaign=ct-breaking&utm_content=western-journal
Linus Pauling was also a Nobel Prize winner and he made a fool out of himself pushing megadoses of Vitamin C. Montagnier’s expertise is much more in line with the topic in question. Still, am suspicious cat about this.
One wild theory out there was that they were creating synthetic superbugs in the lab so they could figure out ways to combat them. Leaving out ethical considerations (all sorts of bad looks), if that was the case, they were doing the virological equivalent of taking two chunks of U-235 and clapping them together to see if they could achieve a critical mass. IMO the epitome of negative intelligence.
Query- Was thinking about this last night. Why do we focus so much on mortality rates and not hospitalization rates, acuity and length of stay. Suppose our next pandemic virus is easily treatable and death rate close to zero, but only if you spend a couple of weeks in the hospital. If you don’t you end up with permanent cognitive dysfunction, ie Alzheimer’s equivalent.
Steve
Steve I – I know. But the question is, does it do harm? If not, its just consumer choice. People waste money on copper bracelets. But only their pocket book is harmed. So many things in medicine have gone through revisions in thinking. Cholesterol. Carbs vs fats. Various vitamins – valuable, or expensive urine?. And now even ventilators.
Steve II – We discuss mortality because one must discuss cost benefit, although we don’t like it. But adults have to. If 40,000 are going to die, do you nuke the economy? We don’t, and never have, with typical flus or any number of diseases. Why not? Why now? What’s new?
You are asking a separate question. Should we design the nation’s health care infrastructure around draconian or rare scenarios, even if not fatalities? That’s still cost benefit. Conflating morbidity and mortality doesn’t change the fact that there is a tradeoff.
I thought your observation on masks was spot on. You get a lot of bang for your buck. The riskless society crowd needs to grow up and consider sensible actions.
The deaths in New York City are out of proportion to its population and the national media are concentrated in New York City.
If traffic fatalities in NYC were that high, it would be deemed a tragedy over which the rest of the country should be shut down. As it is it’s a flyover country problem.
If Al Qaeda had knocked down the Sears Tower rather than the World Trade Center, the furor would have been over in a week. Except in Chicago, of course.
“Conflating morbidity and mortality doesn’t change the fact that there is a tradeoff.”
Not conflating, just adding. In all of the discussions comparing this to the flu people look only at deaths. If this disease “only” caused the same number of deaths with the same morbidities and same costs to the medical system spread out over the same time period as a bad flu year then this is an easier decision, but it is not. It fills hospitals with patients who need ICU level care. Care for other patients is diminished. All of those cost sneed to be factored in.
Zero risk solutions too often lead to bad decisions. That’s partially how we ended up with the Iraq War. We bought time with the lockdowns and that needs to let us end up with livable solutions.
Steve
What is with the very low (10%) reported rate of recovery?
Except apparently in Germany and China?
https://www.worldometers.info/