2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic (Vaccination 2021 Edition)
- Thread starter McElroy
- Start date
What "proper shut downs" are you comparing to? South Korea, who did a harsh lockdown and recently had to lock down a second time because it flared back up? Japan, who knocked it back down and then majorly flared back up? Australia who pushed it down and then flared back up? These aren't places that it took less time and they're done with it. These are places that put in effort and managed to stall a bit longer. The US, outside of New York and surrounding areas, has followed the same infection pattern as all the most applauded success stories, just with wider testing and stricter counting.
Like, there's absolutely national leadership, it's called the CDC. What has the CDC said? Wash your hands, wear a mask, don't touch your face, avoid congregating. Let the businesses and schools open. The guidance was there, it's the individual states that all decided "well, that's not enough, shut down whole industries, cancel medical procedures, etc."
No, it absolutely is not the cure for covid-19. It's mostly only helpful if you're vitamin D deficient in the first place.
Sure, we discovered some treatments. Nice, simple corticosteroids are highly beneficial for the most severe cases.
The lockdowns were important, because without control of the infection our health services might have been overwhelmed: that's a 0.4% mortality rate when we could get pretty much everyone who needed it onto a ventilator. That might not have been the case, in which case it would have been much higher, plus we'd have a lost a ton of people who needed critical care from other causes.
Unless you completely extinguish the virus, it's going to come back as you open up (since the virus is still there slowly going through the workforce). Lockdowns only basically put on pause what's going to happen. That's why I was never a fan of locking the country down, you really only needed to lockdown the really hard hit spots early on and then enact a plan to lower the spread enough that healthcare is not overrun for everywhere else and when the hotspots calm down.
There's about 9% (iirc) that don't develop anti-bodies from their infections and the 1st real documented case of someone getting reinfected was a guy that actually got tested for anti-bodies when leaving the hospital the 1st time and they didn't find any. From the little I've seen of the vaccine trails, they are going good with regards to people developing the anti-bodies, the question is if the vaccine is safe I believe.
And vitamin D deficient people are ones getting severe symptoms and dying (I believe the numbers are like 90+%).
Basically what I said right above this. Lockdown the hotspots (not the country) and develop a plan to keep the spread slow enough to not overwhelm healthcare, simply mask mandates and heavy limits on public indoor congregation do the trick.
Still sucks royally for everyone who has to bury a loved one, bear permanent lung tissue scarring or other long-term health effects, lost their job... I'm going to assume that last part was facetious because if literal, then it suggests some assumptions about the way medical science works.
Yeah, here's the thing about hotspots. Given how interconnected our society is with interstate travel being common on a daily basis, by the time a hotspot shows up on the radar as a hotspot, multiple carriers will most likely have already left the area and possibly infected other vectors. Cases are not spontaneous. Germs have an incubation period before symptoms start to show, if they show. I think you're underestimating just how many variables are in play.
Well let's just check the veracity of your statements, shall we.
"Disclaimer: the article has not been peer-reviewed; it should not replace individual clinical judgement, and the sources cited should be checked. The views expressed in this commentary represent the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the host institution, the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care. The views are not a substitute for professional medical advice."
Oopsie-poopsie.
You do realize you linked to an article, the argument of which is antibody tests have been proven unreliable and therefore a poor metric for extrapolating incidence rate, let alone mortality rate based on extrapolated incidence rates, right?
But I mean, it's only an article titled "Antibody Surveys Suggesting Vast Undercount of Coronavirus Infections may be Unreliable". Easy mistake to make.
Months after our politicians decided "fuck it, let's just let the virus run buck wild to keep billionaires from losing profit". Did you not understand the allegory about stick your dick in holes if you don't know what's on the other side? Would you like a simpler analogy?
Man gives you pill, says yummy pill, you take yummy pill! Man won't say what pill is. Pill could be yummy, but pill could be cyanide, you won't know unless you take pill! Do you take pill?
There's no reliable study suggesting that.
There are studies saying that Vit D deficiency may make someone significantly more susceptible (about twice?) to catching covid-19 but that's nothing like 90% of severe cases.
I'm not saying it doesn't suck, but it could've sucked A LOT worse if this was a far more deadly virus. There's literally been a Vitamin D trial that had extremely positive results. I always thought Vitamin D was the key ever since those stats of like 90% of deaths were people with deficiency. Early on in Sweden, 40 percent of the COVID-19 deaths in Stockholm were Somali immigrants (who are Vitamin D deficient), who make up less than 1 percent of the population. I always felt taking Vitamin D proactively would greatly help but taking it after infection also greatly helps. I don't know why the media has never been on top of these kind of things during the entire pandemic, they could've helped save thousands of lives too.
All the hotspots happened during the time where people didn't even know the virus was there yet so everything was going on like normal. You also had hotspots pop up later in places where people didn't give a fuck like Florida. Just doing common sense things will keep the spread down like the vast majority of states where there's a steady amount of infections but nothing close to overrun healthcare.
Or you can just use the slightly older numbers that were peer-reviewed, there's months of these type of numbers. Where's just one analysis that says the death rate is even over 1%? The source of the article is a very standup and respected institution. It's quite easy to get down to 0.5% without doing any hard number crunching. Back when the "official" death rate was 5%, you can say that there was at least 10x the number of people actually infected over the "official" infections stated due to limited tests and people being asymptomatic or not even sick enough to try to get tested. That alone moves the decimal point one spot over from 5% to 0.5%. It's super basic math.
The people saying anti-body tests are unreliable don't understand basic statistics. It doesn't matter that say the anti-body test is 95% accurate in a survey environment because you account and adjust for that error when you have a sample size of thousands, the NYC anti-body survey had 15,000 people in their sample. In a clinical environment when you have single patient and need an accurate test, that's a whole different situation. Also, anti-body surveys actually downplay the amount of people infected because a small percentage of people don't produce anti-bodies and the anti-bodies also go away after awhile (which is why the plasma therapy has its issues). The fact that an anti-body survey from April is in the same range as the current numbers means it's reliable enough to get a solid picture of the infection spread, which is the whole point of doing the surveys to get a solid picture of areas and their infection spread, not super accurate numbers.
I found the numbers months ago and like I mentioned above that early on in Sweden, 40 percent of the COVID-19 deaths in Stockholm were Somali immigrants (who are Vitamin D deficient), who make up less than 1 percent of the population. I posted Vitamin D stuff months ago in the thread, I don't feel like looking that stuff back up, but the numbers were staggering in the people that died and were hospitalized that were deficient.
USA
AS I and others have mentioned before, the data does not say what you think it does. You are misunderstanding and misrepresenting the information. Vitamin D is not a miracle cure. Everyone should maintain healthy levels of Vitamin D regardless of COVID-19, and COVID-19 , like other illnesses, will be harsher on people with Vitamin D deficiency. This is not exclusive to COVID-19, and this is not something that was unexpected as this is the case for many illnesses. I am not vitamin D deficient, yet I am high risk of severe illness and death if I contract COVID-19. You really should not be spreading misleading information to people online who may take your advice seriously and think they are not at risk of severe illness if they take Vitamin D because it isn't true and could endanger lives. You are not qualified to give that advice.
You literally have medical professionals on here telling you repeatedly that you are misunderstanding the data and posting inaccurate information, but instead of understanding that qualified people are telling you this, you argue that you somehow know better than everyone else even though you are admittedly not an expert in any field that would provide you with the expertise to make that assessment.
You may not realize it, but you are actually giving out harmful medical advice online that could endanger others if they take it seriously. It is a disservice to yourself and others to do such when you are not in any way qualified to do so when you are not even understanding the data you are presenting.
One trial does not deliverance make. That trial is only the first of many before doctors can officially declare any efficacy to the treatment. That's why the media aren't talking about it. And yeah, you're basically writing off the people who do suffer because of this.
None of this refutes what I just said. If you only lockdown the hotspots then you're going to be playing an extended gam of Whack-a-mole for keeps.
Everything I posted is from experts. I'm not personally giving the advice, I'm repeating the advice of other doctors. If you're a normally healthy person with no pre-existing conditions or a minor condition or two, vitamin D should be all you need to survive even having to go to the ICU over getting infected. Where is a single example of me misunderstanding the data? Because I can quote doctors on anything I said. How am I endangering anyone by telling them what doctors and studies are saying? I was the one that posted a Doctor's take on people getting reinfected (the thread here) and I didn't even post a single word of text, just watch the Doctor tell you about it, not me. When I have ever said anything like "if you're young and healthy, you should just 'fuck it' and not worry about doing anything or spreading it to other people"? Doing a couple basic common sense things like wearing a mask and avoiding large public gatherings is what everyone should do and it will and has kept the spread down enough. There's even studies that show wearing a mask helps the wearer as you'll get infected with a lower viral load, which substantially helps in getting less severe symptoms.
It's the only trial that has been done so far. Also, the vitamin D numbers were around for months, the media was nowhere to be found on that. I haven't written off anyone that has suffered. All I'm saying is if you go to the lengths to stop everyone from suffering directly from the virus, you're then indirectly causing far more suffering. There's pretty much always a satisfactory medium and everyone is one extreme or the other (stay home forever to save every possible life or it's hoax/masks are stupid).
You won't be playing whack-a-mole if the public followed simple and basic guidelines (which is partially due to the government not giving clear guidelines as well). The secondary hotspots happened in places that people weren't following simple and basic guidelines and didn't give a fuck. Even look at the infection numbers after the protests, the numbers didn't go up in Minnesota from the protests for example.
This is what I'm talking about with people over reacting. LA County banned door-to-door trick-or-treating when it's virtually impossible to spread the virus when outside. Kids trick-or-treating is perfectly safe.
I said it recently and I'll say it again: the CDC gave pretty clear and consistent guidance (which largely matches the guidance you think is appropriate, and was repeated by the president on many occasions), we just had states (and individuals) convinced the federal guidance was worthless and made up their own systems.
Yes, exactly. You don't make global healthcare policy based on a single trial. That's not how it works.
I feel like you're willfully ignoring what other people are telling you. The safety measures are for mitigation. They are not 100%. Nothing is. And if you don't initiate a total lockdown, carriers will spread the virus out of the hotspots anyway. I want this to be over too, but one clinical trial and a lot of unctuous finger wagging ain't gonna cut it.
You see what I marked through? THAT is misunderstanding and misrepresenting medical advice. It isn't true. We have had plenty of people who were otherwise healthy and not vitamin D deficient die from COVID-19 already. There are other factors that can impact this that you are overlooking and giving that unqualified advice at all is harmful and not factual to the data we currently have on COVID-19 so please stop doing it. If you want to actually tell people something truthful and factual, you tell them this instead:
" Studies have indicated that if you are vitamin D deficient, it might be useful for you to take vitamin D supplements to help your body better modulate the innate and adaptive immune responses that are beneficial at fighting off viruses, including coronaviruses such as COVID-19 and SARS. "
THAT is the truth, what you stated above was not. You are acting like this study is really showing us something different than what we already knew about vitamin D and our immune response to viruses in general. It really is not. It is just confirming that it also applies to COVID-19 as well, but it isn't like a miracle cure like you are making it out to be. You see, if you actually were qualified to understand this, you would have known this already.
Last edited:
I'm a professional biological scientist, and I cannot find any study that supports this claim.
Never mind that such an easy remedy would be all over the headline news, and we'd all be chowing down on Vit D supplements by government diktat.
My degrees actually being in Immunology and Pediatric medicine, it is well known that Vitamin D plays a vital role in modulating the innate and adaptive immune response necessary to fight off any virus and all he is actually referring to is them verifying that the same applies to COVID-19 as well, but since he doesn't understand that this applies to maintaining your immune system in general, he thinks it is some huge finding we didn't already know about.
That is why people that are not qualified to give out medical advice should refrain from doing so.
Out of interest, does anyone know anyone who's actually had it? I only know two people who've definitely had it (tested and such).
The first guy who had it who was ~40, in pretty much all ways really healthy. He said it was pretty awful, barely got out of bed for a week, but didn't need to go to hospital. He's fine now, no lasting effects.
The other one didn't say much about it because she's dead (she was mid-sixties).
The first guy who had it who was ~40, in pretty much all ways really healthy. He said it was pretty awful, barely got out of bed for a week, but didn't need to go to hospital. He's fine now, no lasting effects.
The other one didn't say much about it because she's dead (she was mid-sixties).
Working in medicine, I know a good number of people who have had it some fared better than others. My brother was hospitalized and in ICU but is home now and is likely to have long term damage to his lungs as a result. We have had a few forum members who have had it as well, but they can speak for themselves.