Hi Vinay, you wrote: "Being vaccinated and boosted is all that a healthy person can reasonably do to lower their risk of covid19."
This is completely untrue. Most people who do not properly supplement vitamin D3 cholecalciferol have circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels between 5 and 25 ng/mL, when they need 50 ng/mL for their immune system to mount strong innate and adaptive responses, and to reduce the risk of hyper-inflammatory, cell destroying, cytokine storm response which drive severe COVID-19. There numerous research studies showing low 25(OH)D levels cause much worse outcomes in severe COVID-19. The same is true of influenza, Kawasaki disease, MIS-C, sepsis and numerous chronic inflammatory diseases.
Do you read these comments? For months, I have been urging you here - and in a direct email - to read the most pertinent research articles on vitamin D and the immune system, which you can find at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/05-mds/ My comments to this effect have been liked by many people.
Many doctors do not understand the intracrine (AKA autocrine) and paracrine signaling mechanisms by which multiple types of immune cells use 25(OH)D for signaling within each cell and to nearby cells, respectively. This is unrelated to hormonal signaling. Good, 50 ng/mL, 25(OH)D levels enable these systems to work, so individual immune cells can respond fully and rapidly to their changing circumstances. For 70 kg 154 lb bodyweight, it takes about 0.125 mg (5000 IU) vitamin D3 a day to attain these levels, after several months. There's very little vitamin D3 in food (fortified or not) or multivitamins. UV-B skin exposure can produce plenty of vitamin D3 but is not available all year round and always causes DNA damage, so raising the risk of skin cancer.
Since the liver takes some days to hydroxylate cholecalciferol, even a bolus (10mg 400,000 IU) vitamin D3 dose may be too slow for acute medical emergencies such as sepsis and severe COVID-19, though it is likely to be of significant benefit of administered early enough. By far the best early treatment for those who have not been properly supplementing vitamin D3 for months is a single oral dose of 0.014mg calcifediol per kg bodyweight. This is about 1mg for 70 kg. "Calcifediol" is the pharmaceutical name for 25-hydroxyvitamin D. https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/calcifediol-to-boost-25-hydroxyvitamin
I was thinking the same thing about that statement, but I think Dr. Prasad is just referring to the basic interventions or prevention methods. I dunno.
But yes, losing weight and getting healthier overall are huge benefits during the pandemic ... but how many people will just say, "I got my shots and I'm wearing a mask, so I'm good"?
I don't know. For 2 years folks on "team reality" have believed that once everyone starts getting it or knowing people who got it (and were fine) the hysteria would fade. That would make sense, but I don't see it. Lots of people don't seem meaningfully less afraid of Covid even after getting over a mild case. To the degree the hysteria has faded lately it has been sadly almost entirely on the other side's terms... because "cases are low", not because cases don't matter. The underlying problem is a continued belief that all the NPI nonsense "worked" in some nonfalsifiable way. (I took my mask off to eat, that's why i got a mild case of covid!) Wish I could be more optimistic.
Do you think you might've caught it already? I saw a report from China that with the recent "surge" in covid cases, only 1 out of 15 people tested—and I assume that China can essentially enforce mass testing—were actually symptomatic.
When I caught the 'rona over the holidays, my only significant symptoms were congestion and a sore throat. I did test positive, but otherwise I wouldn't have thought it was the wu flu.
It's possible at some point I had a completely asymptomatic "infection", but prior to 2020 an "asymptomatic infection" simply meant you were never sick.
When my daughter got in Sept 2021 (unvaxxed, of course) and later my wife in December 2021 (vaxxed) I still never got any symptoms (nor my 6 yo son) even though we didn't do any sort of isolation, mask wearing, or other useless theater. I got a rapid antibody test out of curiosity, but it was negative (they aren't too reliable though). Meant to get blood work to see if I had antibodies but been too lazy.
Yes, I can't believe 2 years in and we have only done such a small trial. They had tens of thousands of volunteers and chose 36 people?!? I would gladly submit myself for research. Is it my genes? My affinity for Redbreast 12 year old whiskey? Having kids in school the entire pandemic who passed back and forth regular germs to me?
If we would have taken a fraction of the effort we poured into the 100 mask studies, or HCQ, or IVM I feel we would have far more return on investment.
We poor citizens do deserve answers that seem not to be arriving. An RCT with intentional infection would immediately prove some drug effectiveness numbers.
The FDA also has issues with the newer genetic drugs. Population based trials are pointless if the only people that matter are those with a specific genetic makeup. I suspect the same sort of issue with these mRNA vaccines dumped into a group with very diverse immune systems. Not surprisingly, some people were not particularly helped. It's tough to fool with Mother Nature.
I think some people just can't. my wife was around me when i had it, then around our kids when they had it, then around my mom when she had it, then around a friend at dinner when he knowingly had it. We went out for dinner with a group of friends the other night and she was the only one who hadn't gotten it yet. Many jokes - real FOMO
Government has done such an abysmal job of conveying any real knowledge for 2 years. Instead, all the public gets are hospitalization and death numbers every single day, followed by orders to comply. Is it any wonder that the public have built a very deep level of fear? There are many people still, that are simply married to their position and they only accept more fear based info. Anything positive and reassuring is flushed.
They think it’s like a massive poison gas leak, the entire globe is covered with a fog of contaminated COVID virus permeating the entire atmosphere. Of course when they get home it’s “olley olley oxen free”- can take off the mask there. Somehow there’s no air that gets inside your house from the outside. Well of course, our government told us to lock ourselves in our houses to avoid the virus, so it must not get in there. 🤪
The analogy I used for people who wear their masks "at all times" (e.g., driving, walking alone outside, etc.) is that maybe they're treating covid like radiation fallout after an atomic blast or nuclear plant meltdown.
Why do we need to avoid infections at this stage? I mean, avoid like avoiding getting a cold or something, because given a choice I'd rather not have a cold either. And why is it "better to be vaccinated than not?" Not for kids. Seriously, stop this banal presumption. Kids are at no risk from covid-19. End of story. Anyone still advocating for cruel restrictions on children needs a flogging.
But why are we still "Stop the Spread" and "Stay Safe" and all that? I've banished all that nonsense from my vernacular and my business communications. You should too. SARS-2 is a fact of life. The covidians need to be taken down, hard, and the entire premise of their argument.
In tiny country of Estonia (~1.5 milj. people) we have random regular Covid antibody monitoring done by Tartu university. It's been running probably for a year or more now. Latest results few weeks ago say that ~90% of people living in Estonia have Covid antibodies - weather from Covid or from vaccine.
Although generic vaccination rate is moronic measure (imho. important is the percentage in risk groups not the generic number) it is very well suitable for comparing with THIS 90% number. Actually it's almost the only thing generic vaccination rate number is good for :) . In Estonia 63% of people are vaccinated.
Taking that Omicron spreads like wildfire I'd say likely EVERY SECOND PERSON in Estonia have had Covid in form or another.
PS: Estonia just removed the last mandating measure - masking - in public places this week.
PSS: right now Covid is going down in Estonia as measured by waste-water monitoring. Just like every other viral respitory disease has done in the last millenia in the springtime.
50. Second Pfizer in April 2021. Did not boost (no comorbidities). Omicron first week of January. Was more mild than the normal winter cold I get in January. People need to (in the words of Aaron Rodgers) R-E-L-A-X.
Herd sanity. Now there's a phrase I never thought would come into play two years ago. There seems to be an impossible chasm these days for that to occur. Especially on the left. Like it or not, dem are the facts. (yes, that's a pun, but "that don't make it not true")
Everybody can't get ill from exposure to the virus. As the UK Challenge trials prove https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01780-9, some were never infected despite exposure. We can't know if that might continue to hold given variants but even back in Princess Cruise days there were people who were immune. We really don't know why but it hold promise that some of us, no matter what, will remain on this earth despite the virus or the vaccine. Hopefully the vaccine has not damaged us because it's clear some never needed a vaccine.
Pity that we think we can't have further such trials to discover more. Some think that might be dangerous given some don't believe there are effective therapies. Or it may be impossible to find anyone naive to exposure.
I unknowingly had covid when I had an indoor family gathering for Christmas. Felt off the next day, tested positive. Nobody at that gathering tested positive or had symptoms. Go figure.
Some of us are poor carriers and shed less. Who know why. Could be lung construction could be effective nasal IGA effects. We do know some people per tracing are responsible for an awful lot of infection - the lady in the Korean church. Another of the mysteries.
Thanks, realize this is too much to ask for but what we need is one voice (doctors, scientists, politicians, CDC and WHO) to speak the facts and allow us to be reassured and move forward. Gradually if hammered into the public more and more we would arrive at a reasonable reality.
There is no such authority now or likely forever. I've given up on our public health authorities who refuse to admit they don't know. Worse, some of them seem owned by pHarma. The 'facts' seem twisted to fit whatever narrative has been decided. CDC publishes studies totally full of holes to justify a particular action. Trust who?
I was the first teacher at my adult school to stop wearing masks. (I told students I'd give them about a week after the mandates in LA County dropped so they could get used to fewer and fewer people wearing masks.) Little by little I've noticed students, even elderly ones, taking their masks off. Sometimes they wear them when doing group work, which I can understand as a gesture of courtesy, but obviously it won't do much in terms of actual facts.
We still have a teacher who "requires" students to wear masks, even though technically they don't have to anymore. I have mixed feelings about that, but he's got a good rapport with students, and most students mask anyway, so I guess that's fine. The funny thing is he's hardly in a vulnerable demographic, and he's concerned about his young child contracting covid ... but as we have seen, covid for healthy children is about as dangerous as the seasonal flu.
It may be true that everyone will eventually get covid, but isn't there reason to believe that the severity of disease tends to be related to viral dose in initial inoculum, i.e. the amount of the virus which you inhale? The dose you get could be influenced by your behavior. If you get covid by inhaling a huge amount of covid virus sitting for hours in a bar or nightclub next to a covid+ person who is shouting to be heard over loud music, you will probably ingest a lot more of the virus (and therefore be more likely to have more serious symptoms) than if you inhale a small amount of it e.g. if it slips through a crack between your mask and your skin during a brief trip to a coffee shop. Am I wrong about this? I guess you'll say "well, if you're vaccinated/boosted you'll be fine even if you inhale a huge amount" and certainly the odds are you'll be fine, but it still seems to me that behavior could influence dose and therefore influence the odds of severe symptoms.
A bunch of unknowns. Dose does probably matter as does an individuals immune response capability. Not known if there is a threshold effect either. This much OK beyond that problems arise. More challenge trials could get to an answer if they could be done safely. Might be a place of those that believe in IVM to join such a trial.
Hi Vinay, you wrote: "Being vaccinated and boosted is all that a healthy person can reasonably do to lower their risk of covid19."
This is completely untrue. Most people who do not properly supplement vitamin D3 cholecalciferol have circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels between 5 and 25 ng/mL, when they need 50 ng/mL for their immune system to mount strong innate and adaptive responses, and to reduce the risk of hyper-inflammatory, cell destroying, cytokine storm response which drive severe COVID-19. There numerous research studies showing low 25(OH)D levels cause much worse outcomes in severe COVID-19. The same is true of influenza, Kawasaki disease, MIS-C, sepsis and numerous chronic inflammatory diseases.
Do you read these comments? For months, I have been urging you here - and in a direct email - to read the most pertinent research articles on vitamin D and the immune system, which you can find at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/05-mds/ My comments to this effect have been liked by many people.
Many doctors do not understand the intracrine (AKA autocrine) and paracrine signaling mechanisms by which multiple types of immune cells use 25(OH)D for signaling within each cell and to nearby cells, respectively. This is unrelated to hormonal signaling. Good, 50 ng/mL, 25(OH)D levels enable these systems to work, so individual immune cells can respond fully and rapidly to their changing circumstances. For 70 kg 154 lb bodyweight, it takes about 0.125 mg (5000 IU) vitamin D3 a day to attain these levels, after several months. There's very little vitamin D3 in food (fortified or not) or multivitamins. UV-B skin exposure can produce plenty of vitamin D3 but is not available all year round and always causes DNA damage, so raising the risk of skin cancer.
Since the liver takes some days to hydroxylate cholecalciferol, even a bolus (10mg 400,000 IU) vitamin D3 dose may be too slow for acute medical emergencies such as sepsis and severe COVID-19, though it is likely to be of significant benefit of administered early enough. By far the best early treatment for those who have not been properly supplementing vitamin D3 for months is a single oral dose of 0.014mg calcifediol per kg bodyweight. This is about 1mg for 70 kg. "Calcifediol" is the pharmaceutical name for 25-hydroxyvitamin D. https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/calcifediol-to-boost-25-hydroxyvitamin
Choir here.
Sadly, I don’t think he reads the comments. He’s said so.
I was thinking the same thing about that statement, but I think Dr. Prasad is just referring to the basic interventions or prevention methods. I dunno.
But yes, losing weight and getting healthier overall are huge benefits during the pandemic ... but how many people will just say, "I got my shots and I'm wearing a mask, so I'm good"?
I don't know. For 2 years folks on "team reality" have believed that once everyone starts getting it or knowing people who got it (and were fine) the hysteria would fade. That would make sense, but I don't see it. Lots of people don't seem meaningfully less afraid of Covid even after getting over a mild case. To the degree the hysteria has faded lately it has been sadly almost entirely on the other side's terms... because "cases are low", not because cases don't matter. The underlying problem is a continued belief that all the NPI nonsense "worked" in some nonfalsifiable way. (I took my mask off to eat, that's why i got a mild case of covid!) Wish I could be more optimistic.
I don’t know, I’ve tried my hardest, but still can’t seem to catch it. I’m not sure what more I can do.
Do you think you might've caught it already? I saw a report from China that with the recent "surge" in covid cases, only 1 out of 15 people tested—and I assume that China can essentially enforce mass testing—were actually symptomatic.
When I caught the 'rona over the holidays, my only significant symptoms were congestion and a sore throat. I did test positive, but otherwise I wouldn't have thought it was the wu flu.
It's possible at some point I had a completely asymptomatic "infection", but prior to 2020 an "asymptomatic infection" simply meant you were never sick.
When my daughter got in Sept 2021 (unvaxxed, of course) and later my wife in December 2021 (vaxxed) I still never got any symptoms (nor my 6 yo son) even though we didn't do any sort of isolation, mask wearing, or other useless theater. I got a rapid antibody test out of curiosity, but it was negative (they aren't too reliable though). Meant to get blood work to see if I had antibodies but been too lazy.
Thanks for being sane in these crazy times!
As noted in the challenge trial (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01780-9) some of us are quite immune but we don't know why. I might think finding out would be a priority.
Yes, I can't believe 2 years in and we have only done such a small trial. They had tens of thousands of volunteers and chose 36 people?!? I would gladly submit myself for research. Is it my genes? My affinity for Redbreast 12 year old whiskey? Having kids in school the entire pandemic who passed back and forth regular germs to me?
If we would have taken a fraction of the effort we poured into the 100 mask studies, or HCQ, or IVM I feel we would have far more return on investment.
We poor citizens do deserve answers that seem not to be arriving. An RCT with intentional infection would immediately prove some drug effectiveness numbers.
The FDA also has issues with the newer genetic drugs. Population based trials are pointless if the only people that matter are those with a specific genetic makeup. I suspect the same sort of issue with these mRNA vaccines dumped into a group with very diverse immune systems. Not surprisingly, some people were not particularly helped. It's tough to fool with Mother Nature.
I think some people just can't. my wife was around me when i had it, then around our kids when they had it, then around my mom when she had it, then around a friend at dinner when he knowingly had it. We went out for dinner with a group of friends the other night and she was the only one who hadn't gotten it yet. Many jokes - real FOMO
Government has done such an abysmal job of conveying any real knowledge for 2 years. Instead, all the public gets are hospitalization and death numbers every single day, followed by orders to comply. Is it any wonder that the public have built a very deep level of fear? There are many people still, that are simply married to their position and they only accept more fear based info. Anything positive and reassuring is flushed.
Saw somebody wearing a KN95 at the park yesterday ... it was completely empty except for me. SMH. This is a typical scene in my part of LA County.
They think it’s like a massive poison gas leak, the entire globe is covered with a fog of contaminated COVID virus permeating the entire atmosphere. Of course when they get home it’s “olley olley oxen free”- can take off the mask there. Somehow there’s no air that gets inside your house from the outside. Well of course, our government told us to lock ourselves in our houses to avoid the virus, so it must not get in there. 🤪
The analogy I used for people who wear their masks "at all times" (e.g., driving, walking alone outside, etc.) is that maybe they're treating covid like radiation fallout after an atomic blast or nuclear plant meltdown.
Not at all helped by politicians deciding that it was a good way to separate us. Started with the stupid masks as evidence of your partisan views.
Why do we need to avoid infections at this stage? I mean, avoid like avoiding getting a cold or something, because given a choice I'd rather not have a cold either. And why is it "better to be vaccinated than not?" Not for kids. Seriously, stop this banal presumption. Kids are at no risk from covid-19. End of story. Anyone still advocating for cruel restrictions on children needs a flogging.
But why are we still "Stop the Spread" and "Stay Safe" and all that? I've banished all that nonsense from my vernacular and my business communications. You should too. SARS-2 is a fact of life. The covidians need to be taken down, hard, and the entire premise of their argument.
In tiny country of Estonia (~1.5 milj. people) we have random regular Covid antibody monitoring done by Tartu university. It's been running probably for a year or more now. Latest results few weeks ago say that ~90% of people living in Estonia have Covid antibodies - weather from Covid or from vaccine.
Although generic vaccination rate is moronic measure (imho. important is the percentage in risk groups not the generic number) it is very well suitable for comparing with THIS 90% number. Actually it's almost the only thing generic vaccination rate number is good for :) . In Estonia 63% of people are vaccinated.
Taking that Omicron spreads like wildfire I'd say likely EVERY SECOND PERSON in Estonia have had Covid in form or another.
PS: Estonia just removed the last mandating measure - masking - in public places this week.
PSS: right now Covid is going down in Estonia as measured by waste-water monitoring. Just like every other viral respitory disease has done in the last millenia in the springtime.
Sources:
- https://news.err.ee/1608540241/nearly-90-percent-of-adults-have-developed-coronavirus-antibodies
- https://terviseamet.ee/et/uudised/koroonaviiruse-reoveeuuringu-tulemused-naitavad-jatkuvalt-langustrendi
- https://vaktsineeri.ee/covid-19/statistika/
50. Second Pfizer in April 2021. Did not boost (no comorbidities). Omicron first week of January. Was more mild than the normal winter cold I get in January. People need to (in the words of Aaron Rodgers) R-E-L-A-X.
It’s hard when some of these people have made Covid hysteria a personality trait.
Herd sanity. Now there's a phrase I never thought would come into play two years ago. There seems to be an impossible chasm these days for that to occur. Especially on the left. Like it or not, dem are the facts. (yes, that's a pun, but "that don't make it not true")
Everybody can't get ill from exposure to the virus. As the UK Challenge trials prove https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01780-9, some were never infected despite exposure. We can't know if that might continue to hold given variants but even back in Princess Cruise days there were people who were immune. We really don't know why but it hold promise that some of us, no matter what, will remain on this earth despite the virus or the vaccine. Hopefully the vaccine has not damaged us because it's clear some never needed a vaccine.
Pity that we think we can't have further such trials to discover more. Some think that might be dangerous given some don't believe there are effective therapies. Or it may be impossible to find anyone naive to exposure.
I unknowingly had covid when I had an indoor family gathering for Christmas. Felt off the next day, tested positive. Nobody at that gathering tested positive or had symptoms. Go figure.
Some of us are poor carriers and shed less. Who know why. Could be lung construction could be effective nasal IGA effects. We do know some people per tracing are responsible for an awful lot of infection - the lady in the Korean church. Another of the mysteries.
Thanks, realize this is too much to ask for but what we need is one voice (doctors, scientists, politicians, CDC and WHO) to speak the facts and allow us to be reassured and move forward. Gradually if hammered into the public more and more we would arrive at a reasonable reality.
There is no such authority now or likely forever. I've given up on our public health authorities who refuse to admit they don't know. Worse, some of them seem owned by pHarma. The 'facts' seem twisted to fit whatever narrative has been decided. CDC publishes studies totally full of holes to justify a particular action. Trust who?
I was the first teacher at my adult school to stop wearing masks. (I told students I'd give them about a week after the mandates in LA County dropped so they could get used to fewer and fewer people wearing masks.) Little by little I've noticed students, even elderly ones, taking their masks off. Sometimes they wear them when doing group work, which I can understand as a gesture of courtesy, but obviously it won't do much in terms of actual facts.
We still have a teacher who "requires" students to wear masks, even though technically they don't have to anymore. I have mixed feelings about that, but he's got a good rapport with students, and most students mask anyway, so I guess that's fine. The funny thing is he's hardly in a vulnerable demographic, and he's concerned about his young child contracting covid ... but as we have seen, covid for healthy children is about as dangerous as the seasonal flu.
The last paragraph is pure gold.
It may be true that everyone will eventually get covid, but isn't there reason to believe that the severity of disease tends to be related to viral dose in initial inoculum, i.e. the amount of the virus which you inhale? The dose you get could be influenced by your behavior. If you get covid by inhaling a huge amount of covid virus sitting for hours in a bar or nightclub next to a covid+ person who is shouting to be heard over loud music, you will probably ingest a lot more of the virus (and therefore be more likely to have more serious symptoms) than if you inhale a small amount of it e.g. if it slips through a crack between your mask and your skin during a brief trip to a coffee shop. Am I wrong about this? I guess you'll say "well, if you're vaccinated/boosted you'll be fine even if you inhale a huge amount" and certainly the odds are you'll be fine, but it still seems to me that behavior could influence dose and therefore influence the odds of severe symptoms.
A bunch of unknowns. Dose does probably matter as does an individuals immune response capability. Not known if there is a threshold effect either. This much OK beyond that problems arise. More challenge trials could get to an answer if they could be done safely. Might be a place of those that believe in IVM to join such a trial.