Perhaps the government should be pushing vitamin d, vitamin c, zinc, weight loss, a healthy lifestyle, and natural immunity to prevent covid rather than social distancing, lockdowns, and continual ineffective vaccines and boosters. (It is amazing to me that every medication advertised on television comes with numerous and sometimes deadly side effects, yet they insist that relatively new novel vaccines have absolutely none.)
The first bit would ultimately be a bit irresponsible, and the second bit is blatant ant-vaxx.
'Exercise' might marginally improve your chances of defeating COVID, but in order for it to have a material effect for most Americans it would take literally years of complete transformation of habits.
Furthermore, even that would not be remotely as beneficial as vaccines or social distancing, maybe not even masks.
Vaccines >>> Doing Cardio.
The reason the government probably does not talk heavily about 'eating well' as some type of 'response behaviour' to COVID, is because people will get the 'Joe Rogan' mentality, and believe that 'Good Nutrition, Hitting the Gym Hard, and Positive Mindset' will just 'Alpha' their way past COVID, when that's definitely not the case, i.e. people would get a vastly over inflated sense of what their likely trivial lifestyle changes will do.
And of course:
"yet they insist that relatively new novel vaccines have absolutely none" (side effects) - which is blatantly and offensively false. Literally every article about vaccines talks about their numerous direct side-effects that almost 80% of people exhibit. And literally 100% of vaccine recipients are warned directly of these, including symptoms of myocarditis, signs to look for and when to call a doctor.
I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, but at this point you can't seriously expect people to continue with masks and social distancing. The virus will be around forever and those measures are obviously unsustainable; in most areas people have already stopped.
I think that full vaccination and reasonable measures for masks/social-distancing are still the best approach for trying to halt the spread/damage of covid.
Realistically, I can't argue with your point. It's like giving up. It's sad that many people won't take basic steps to help protect others (including themselves), but I guess that's a reality-check.
Those who are older, with multiple comorbidities, or are immune-compromised, listen-up: More than enough people don't a shit if anyone other than themselves lives or dies that you should probably just isolate yourselves from society indefinitely.
All the more reason to strongly urge people to get vaccinated. Clearly one can't count on neighbors, the community or broader society to take minimumal steps to help protect themselves and others.
So you're on your own, living life at your own risk. There is no "society", just you. Protect yourself and get the shots.
I agree with your sentiment, but it's a different from saying that 'eating healthy and exercise is a substitute for vaccines'.
At this point, it's looking like 'mostly vaccinated' is the primary measure and beyond that we can live with it.
But there are important caveats in that 1) hospitalisations have been a problem and that if were didn't have vaccinations (which help a lot with serious cases) we'd be in a world of hurt so we need to keep up with the vaxxes (the antivirals are not a solution just yet) and 2) we need to accept there could be another wave that's worse than Omicron or Delta and that at least some measures have to be re-implemented.
Government should push better personal health choices? Absolutely. It is a good strategy regardless of covid.
But how can natural immunity prevent covid? Natural immunity appears after infection, it could not somehow magically appear before the infection.
Yes, if people are generally healthy (no diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and so on), they can fare better but it is not guaranteed. Yes, covid death toll in US is high, but it is not low also other countries with much better peoples general health condition.
We know that vaccines help tremendously to reduce serious illness. It is incredibly stupid to not use them.
I do not support vaccination against seasonal flu. You can do it and you probably should do it when you are old but the risk to NOT contact it for general population is at MINIMUM 75%, most likely close to 85-90%.
This is a strange way of titling that article, I think. Not very responsible journalism, but I get that this is the kind of title that generates clicks. Vitamin D doesn't "fight" COVID directly. Vitamin D plays a critical role in the body's immune system. So the immune system is what is important, and vitamin D in theory is a kind of loose proxy for how well your immune system might mount a response.
The study itself is a correlation study with a relatively small number of patients... (not that I'm dismissing these types of studies, they have value), and it is in line with what I described above. If you have low vit D levels (for various reasons), your risk of severe covid increases.
That's kind of where the study ends. The study is basic and observational-- it does not show that supplementing with vit D (or consuming foods high in vit D) prevents COVID or improves health outcomes. You'd need a different kind of study for that-- a far more rigorous one. It's probably ok to speculate that normal/healthy vit D levels might indicate better immune resiliance vs covid, given that moderate amounts of supplementation are shown to safely increase serum levels (to a point). But this particular study isn't medical evidence that vit D supplements "fight" covid like a medicine (e.g., Remdesivir) or that vit D is an effective covid strategy worthy of higher prioritization versus other recommendations.
Certainly far and away Step #1 is to get vaccinated and boosted. Period. Step #2 is to practice appropriate social distancing/masking, avoiding infected people and crowds.
In parallel, over the medium and long term it would be beneficial to improve your health lifestyle factors - diet/weight (including getting all essential nutrients such as vit D), sleep, stress, exercise, avoid smoking/excess alcohol etc. These things take quite a bit of time to reap benefits, a few months at minimum. It's not something you'll achieve rapidly and certainly not once you're infected with covid.
But getting these under control will improve your health almost across-the-board. You'll help lower the risk/impact of chronic diseases, improve aging/longevity, improve your immune system, and even lower the risk of serious COVID.
But these are things which should be pursued in parallel to and in addition to Steps 1 and 2. Independently it is not likely to save you from covid if you're in a higher risk category (e.g., over 40 years old especially).
And coming back to the misleading title of the article, certainly consuming vitamin D is no covid prophylactic on its own. If you think popping vitamin D or fish oil pills is going to save your ass once you get covid... well you'll likely get about as much benefit from that as you would from thoughts and prayers.
Bottom line: For now, embracing vitamins or common-sense lifestyle/wellness tips as a primary covid prevention strategy is at best foolhardy and at worst dangerous and delusional.
Maybe you missed the part where I did not dismiss the results of the study.
I simply took the next logical step and pointed out that vitamin D has not been proven as a preventative or cure for COVID.
That's right. Vitamins don't prevent or cure COVID.
Really? We're arguing this in 2022? Cartoonist Scott Adams, and 1991 relevant music artist Right Said Fred tweet this study and we think we've got the secret to free, cheap COVID antivirals?
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 39.5 ms ] threadhttps://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
'Exercise' might marginally improve your chances of defeating COVID, but in order for it to have a material effect for most Americans it would take literally years of complete transformation of habits.
Furthermore, even that would not be remotely as beneficial as vaccines or social distancing, maybe not even masks.
Vaccines >>> Doing Cardio.
The reason the government probably does not talk heavily about 'eating well' as some type of 'response behaviour' to COVID, is because people will get the 'Joe Rogan' mentality, and believe that 'Good Nutrition, Hitting the Gym Hard, and Positive Mindset' will just 'Alpha' their way past COVID, when that's definitely not the case, i.e. people would get a vastly over inflated sense of what their likely trivial lifestyle changes will do.
And of course:
"yet they insist that relatively new novel vaccines have absolutely none" (side effects) - which is blatantly and offensively false. Literally every article about vaccines talks about their numerous direct side-effects that almost 80% of people exhibit. And literally 100% of vaccine recipients are warned directly of these, including symptoms of myocarditis, signs to look for and when to call a doctor.
https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/
Realistically, I can't argue with your point. It's like giving up. It's sad that many people won't take basic steps to help protect others (including themselves), but I guess that's a reality-check.
Those who are older, with multiple comorbidities, or are immune-compromised, listen-up: More than enough people don't a shit if anyone other than themselves lives or dies that you should probably just isolate yourselves from society indefinitely.
All the more reason to strongly urge people to get vaccinated. Clearly one can't count on neighbors, the community or broader society to take minimumal steps to help protect themselves and others.
So you're on your own, living life at your own risk. There is no "society", just you. Protect yourself and get the shots.
At this point, it's looking like 'mostly vaccinated' is the primary measure and beyond that we can live with it.
But there are important caveats in that 1) hospitalisations have been a problem and that if were didn't have vaccinations (which help a lot with serious cases) we'd be in a world of hurt so we need to keep up with the vaxxes (the antivirals are not a solution just yet) and 2) we need to accept there could be another wave that's worse than Omicron or Delta and that at least some measures have to be re-implemented.
But how can natural immunity prevent covid? Natural immunity appears after infection, it could not somehow magically appear before the infection.
Yes, if people are generally healthy (no diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and so on), they can fare better but it is not guaranteed. Yes, covid death toll in US is high, but it is not low also other countries with much better peoples general health condition.
We know that vaccines help tremendously to reduce serious illness. It is incredibly stupid to not use them.
I do not support vaccination against seasonal flu. You can do it and you probably should do it when you are old but the risk to NOT contact it for general population is at MINIMUM 75%, most likely close to 85-90%.
The risk to NOT contact covid is close to 0.
The study itself is a correlation study with a relatively small number of patients... (not that I'm dismissing these types of studies, they have value), and it is in line with what I described above. If you have low vit D levels (for various reasons), your risk of severe covid increases.
That's kind of where the study ends. The study is basic and observational-- it does not show that supplementing with vit D (or consuming foods high in vit D) prevents COVID or improves health outcomes. You'd need a different kind of study for that-- a far more rigorous one. It's probably ok to speculate that normal/healthy vit D levels might indicate better immune resiliance vs covid, given that moderate amounts of supplementation are shown to safely increase serum levels (to a point). But this particular study isn't medical evidence that vit D supplements "fight" covid like a medicine (e.g., Remdesivir) or that vit D is an effective covid strategy worthy of higher prioritization versus other recommendations.
Certainly far and away Step #1 is to get vaccinated and boosted. Period. Step #2 is to practice appropriate social distancing/masking, avoiding infected people and crowds.
In parallel, over the medium and long term it would be beneficial to improve your health lifestyle factors - diet/weight (including getting all essential nutrients such as vit D), sleep, stress, exercise, avoid smoking/excess alcohol etc. These things take quite a bit of time to reap benefits, a few months at minimum. It's not something you'll achieve rapidly and certainly not once you're infected with covid.
But getting these under control will improve your health almost across-the-board. You'll help lower the risk/impact of chronic diseases, improve aging/longevity, improve your immune system, and even lower the risk of serious COVID. But these are things which should be pursued in parallel to and in addition to Steps 1 and 2. Independently it is not likely to save you from covid if you're in a higher risk category (e.g., over 40 years old especially).
And coming back to the misleading title of the article, certainly consuming vitamin D is no covid prophylactic on its own. If you think popping vitamin D or fish oil pills is going to save your ass once you get covid... well you'll likely get about as much benefit from that as you would from thoughts and prayers.
Bottom line: For now, embracing vitamins or common-sense lifestyle/wellness tips as a primary covid prevention strategy is at best foolhardy and at worst dangerous and delusional.
https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/
I simply took the next logical step and pointed out that vitamin D has not been proven as a preventative or cure for COVID.
That's right. Vitamins don't prevent or cure COVID.
Really? We're arguing this in 2022? Cartoonist Scott Adams, and 1991 relevant music artist Right Said Fred tweet this study and we think we've got the secret to free, cheap COVID antivirals?