Covid Journal, October 29, 2020
Take Your Vitamin D
This video probably won’t be up long, but check it out when you get a chance.
The author explores the impact that using Vitamin D has on our system and, more importantly, how it can contribute to a reduction in susceptibility to Covid-19.
The main finding of this nursing-home-based quasi-experimental study is that, irrespective of all measured potential confounders, bolus vitamin D3 supplementation during or just before COVID-19 was associated with less severe COVID-19 and better survival rate in frail elderly. No other treatment showed protective effect. This novel finding provides a scientific basis for vitamin D replacement trials attempting to improve COVID-19 prognosis.
In conclusion, we found significant crude relationships between vitamin D levels and the number COVID-19 cases and especially the mortality caused by this infection. The most vulnerable group of population for COVID-19, the aging population, is also the one that has the most deficit Vitamin D levels.
Vitamin D has already been shown to protect against acute respiratory infections and it was shown to be safe. It should be advisable to perform dedicated studies about vitamin D levels in COVID-19 patients with different degrees of disease severity.
This is one of this ‘duh’ kind of recommendations. It’s not perfect, but given that it’s harmless, relatively cost-effective and if you choose to do implement a daily regime of using Vitamin D, it’s you and you only that’s being affected.
Here’s some of the research that backs up the recommendation:
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007602030296X#fig0010
- https://scitechdaily.com/over-80-of-hospitalized-covid-19-patients-have-vitamin-d-deficiency-study-finds/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7202265/
- https://www.spectracell.com/blog/posts/vitamin-d-covid-19
TAKE YOUR VITAMIN D!!
Has Covid Replaced the Flu?
The Daily Mail in the UK has reported that the ‘flu’ has virtually disappeared.
Cases ACROSS THE GLOBE that are labeled as ‘the flu’ have dropped a whopping 98%.
Examples?
In the Southern Hemisphere, where the flu season happens during our summer months, the WHO data suggests it never took off at all. In Australia, just 14 positive flu cases were recorded in April, compared with 367 during the same month in 2019 – a 96 per cent drop. By June, usually the peak of its flu season, there were none. In fact, Australia has not reported a positive case to the WHO since July. In Chile, just 12 cases of flu were detected between April and October. There were nearly 7,000 during the same period in 2019. And in South Africa, surveillance tests picked up just two cases at the beginning of the season, which quickly dropped to zero over the following month – overall, a 99 per cent drop compared with the previous year. In the UK, our flu season is only just beginning. But since Covid-19 began spreading in March, just 767 cases have been reported to the WHO compared with nearly 7,000 from March to October last year. And while lab-confirmed flu cases last year jumped by ten per cent between September and October, as a new season gets under way this year they’ve risen by just 0.7 per cent so far.
What’s happening here? Are we just labeling new cases of the flu as Covid? Or has Covid just ‘crowded out’ the flu?
Public Health England confirmed that flu testing has been lower this year. However the body also say that available data does show that overall flu activity is ‘low’. There is also the danger that, in the absence of testing flu cases in this country and elsewhere, flu cases could be mistaken for Covid-19.
Meanwhile, opioid deaths and suicides in BC outpace Covid fatalities by a ratio of about 10 to 1.