RE: Are lockdowns justified?
April 1, 2021 at 9:10 am
(This post was last modified: April 1, 2021 at 9:15 am by FlatAssembler.)
Ranjr Wrote:How is that obvious?What is it that you doubt? Do you doubt people spend less time on the sun during a lockdown? Or do you doubt that spending less time on the sun makes you more susceptible to Vitamin D deficiency?
If you doubt that Vitamin D deficiency makes COVID worse, well, that is not very unreasonable, given the lack of scientific explanation of how Vitamin D deficiency could affect the immune system. However, I think there are some relatively good reasons to think Vitamin D indeed makes COVID less severe. First of all, the well-known studies showing that. Second, COVID mortality and hospitalization rate is way lower in summer, even if there is no lockdown, such as in Sweden:
![[Image: lmPfOkqh.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/lmPfOkqh.jpg)
To me, that is enough evidence to consider the possibility that lockdowns are counter-productive because of leading to Vitamin D deficiency.
Ranjr Wrote:Masks workThey are probably around 20% effective, but it is hard to tell. First of all, we do not know for sure that COVID is not airborne. If it is airborne, then masks that are commonly worn have no effect. If it is not airborne, as it probably isn't, then how effective they are is a matter of social sciences, how people actually behave when they are forced to wear a mask. The most rigorous study about that done thus far, the Danish study, which involved 3000 people, had a statistical-significance-cut-off at 46%. They could not, with the massive funding they had, design a study which could detect effects larger than 46%. Of course, it failed to detect any effect of masks, as they are usually worn, on COVID-19.
Ranjr Wrote:So do lockdownsIt is very hard to tell. They definitely do not have a huge effect. The best predictor for COVID-related mortality across countries is life expectancy: higher the life expectancy, higher the deaths from COVID. Another good predictor is obesity of the population. And any real study about how much impact lockdowns have will be lumping good and bad policies together, leading to very misleading results.
Ranjr Wrote:You don't like the inconvenience of pandemic protocol. That doesn't mean lockdowns and masks fail to reduce the spread.That also doesn't mean they succeeded at reducing the spread.
The Grand Nudger Wrote:ands that's why the us engages in a massive effort to fortify our foodsAnd yet 40% of Americans are deficient in Vitamin D. And so are 80% of American COVID patients, according to the famous study that made it into global news.