(Updated 01/02.2021)
If you are wondering why I am frustrated that our COVID-19 response strategy is ignoring the root cause reasons some people get very sick and die from this infection, here is one reason: most Kiwis are vitamin D deficient.
The research evidence is clear and convincing that this disease could be mild, as it already is for most people. Things could be a lot better for those most at risk, such as my Polynesian brothers and sisters. Let's look at the evidence for just one of many beneficial nutrients: Vitamin D - the "Sunlight Vitamin". Dark-skinned people like my partner, Alofa, need at least 10 times the sunlight as pale me. Is it just a coincidence that Polynesians with their brown skin are 10-18 times more likely to die than whiteys like me if they get infected, or is there a connection?
A pilot Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT), reported that 98% of the treatment group did not get admitted to the ICU compared to 50% admission in the untreated group, of which 15% (2 people) later died. After adjusting for confounding variables, patients treated with vitamin D had 0.03 times the risk for ICU admission compared to non-treatment. Put another way, patients not treated with vitamin D had 33.3 times the risk of ICU admission compared to patients treated with vitamin D.
If you got COVID-19, would it satisfy you to receive standard treatment only?
Vitamin D is free from the sun and cheap as a non-patent supplement. Big Pharma and Big Medicine can not make trillions in profits from Vitamin D. One source for supplementation is lanolin from sheep's wool, which NZ has plenty of. How about we were to offer a healthy dose of Vitamin D to every man, woman and child in New Zealand for 20 cents a day? Actually, why not make it free to everyone? Vitamin D improves outcomes when given before infection and during all stages if infected with Vitamin D, so it is a no-brainer.
Vitamin D is an effective treatment for COVID-19. Random effects meta-analysis of the 14 treatment studies to date results in an estimated reduction of 70% in the effect measured, RR 0.30 [0.18-0.52].
Where can you go to see all of this evidence and more?
"Conclusions: Vitamin D isn’t going to magically make you immune to respiratory infections, but it will likely decrease the frequency with which you get them by a bit if you are not deficient, and by a lot if you are deficient. People who are likely to be deficient are those who don’t get a lot of sun (the elderly frequently fall in to this category), those with darker skin living in northern latitudes, those covering large amounts of skin whenever they are outside (a lot of muslim females fall in to this category). If you belong to any of these categories, you should definitely be taking a vitamin D supplement. If you don’t, it’s unlikely to hurt, and it might help."
Where do you get your Vitamin D?
Free from the sun.
From foods such as liver, oily fish, full cream milk, eggs and red meat (these sources must be from animals that have been outside getting their own vitamin D, while munching green grass, and not confined to sunless barns and cages).
Supplements: ORTHOPLEX VITAMIN D 1000IU - 200 CAPS and SOLGAR COD LIVER OIL - ONE A DAY 100 SOFTGELS (Two per day of each per adult and one per day of each for children)
Come on, Government and Health Authorities, get with the play. Get up with the evidence. Don't play your Team of Five Million as fools. Get your act together!
Please leave your comments and any additional information you might like to add, below. Thank you.
Mike, totally agree. Pass this information around, thanks.
Another point: there is the need to keep the COVID messaging simple and on point, lest people get confused. I understand why there is no real health advice, just things like wash your hands, wear a mask etc. But this is unacceptable.
The evidence is clear: well-nourished people who get outdoors have little to fear from this virus. This includes the healthy elderly.
It has been and still is notoriously difficult to get the bureaucrats in the Health Dept. to change policy unless there is pharmaceutical benefit. I have experienced this for nigh on 40 years. There are so-called expert advisors who covertly dictate policy whilst gliding around the corridors of the beehive. Persistent lobbying may eventually produce a result but spreading the information on Vit.D to the public and especially to the Maori and Pacific Islanders before the winter months will probably be the most effective.
I would not have too much of a problem with the initial lockdowns and even a vaccine if the root causes of so much of this mayhem were being addressed - such as poverty. Phillip, the Sunsmart Policy was devised by a committee of privileged white people. It is a policy that protects those with the Celtic Gene for adaptation to low sunlight regions of the planet. While it may be protective for these millions of people, perhaps, it certainly discriminates against dark-skinned people, especially the ones living in high and low latitudes and in urban environments.
Why should it be a requirement at school, for a North African child living in Wellington, NZ, to cover up, wear a hat and…
The data you present shows how important "D" can act to our benefit. I could hardly finish your article before getting my daily dose. I noted it is D3, something I hadn't paid any attention to before today. Thank you for emphasizing this supplement.
There is so much bad faith on this, around the world, that dark skinned people dying of Covid at higher rates is asserted to be "evidence of systemic racism". Orwell's "1984" was about modern progressivism.
If there is systemic racism anywhere, it is in "progressive" establishments letting dark skinned people die, and fail in numerous ways, when there are good-faith solutions rather than punitive measures against millions of people deemed to be guilty of invented thought crimes. The great MLK would be turning in his grave - just who is demonstrating "good content of character" in all this, eh? Progressives sure ain't the modern day's abolitionists.