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It is indeed a funny old world. Gets funnier every day, although I suspect it’s always been this way. It’s just my sense of humor is improving with age.
A study was recently released of covid-19 patient outcomes based on vitamin D blood levels. Given the megatons of research on the wide spectrum of positive health effects of vitamin D, this was a pretty obvious thing to investigate.
The difference between critical and severe covid-19 cases and mild ones was fairly astonishing, based on a vitamin D level easily achievable with reasonable supplementation.
There was also an Irish study that looked at covid-19 patient outcomes based on latitude that confirms one’s intuition.
Will be writing more about this whole area. Still digging into related areas of obfuscation and finance.
Good one! Though my Aunt Matilda would smack you sharply on the arm for a smarty pants comment like that.
Many years ago, when I was a young pup, she expressed the opinion that eating vegetarian would make one weak. She didn’t appreciate it when I pointed out elephants eat grass and leaves and they seem to be doing ok.
Yep, I deserved it.
Novavax Stock Rockets On Funding Boost For Coronavirus Vaccine
I’m pretty sure Germany has an extradition treaty with us so fleeing the country can’t be the reason.
Btw, in light of my reply to Biosect, I wasn’t being facetious. I believe I understood you, though at this point I wouldn’t put any money on it.
Thanks ex - your clear explanation is much appreciated!
Yes. And also remember that Helios is going to finish two trials this year, which will be before any Athx readouts but will definitely boost the stock if positive results are reported.
From their recent earnings call:
PS on selenium supplementation. Too much of a good thing is not so good in this case. Stick to the recommendation on limits on your label. I have not had any issues because I don’t overdo it. There is a possibility of selenium poisoning but if you buy from a quality company and follow the label, it should not be an issue. You have to go hog wild to have an issue but people...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3225252/
Selenium and Vitamin D share similarities. As your post points out, supportive of immune function.
Anti-cancer function of both was originally discovered through deficiencies. Vitamin D because of lack of sun above certain latitudes (breast cancer is how I came to all this), selenium because of variations in soil distribution and therefore in the food grown there.
Therefore, supplementation makes sense if you are subject to those deficiencies.
I don’t eat oysters with any regularity and am not a fan of Brazil nuts, though I’ll choke one down if available. One a day is supposed to be sufficient but I don’t rely on that because of the possibility of selenium depletion in the soil.
It was determined in a clinical trial that selenium in the form of selenomethionine is absorbed better. Haven’t researched this is 20 years, so not sure if there is anything new on absorption. Could be a new formulation that costs more. Not worth the effort to check but if you do, please share with the class.
Side note: Magnesium is important, for the similar reasons, especially soil depletion (think about how industrial food is grown — I don’t believe it is ever replaced. If it is, please provide reference so I can sleep at night, lol). It is also needed if you supplement with Vitamin D as a cofactor. Don’t supplement with magnesium citrate. It’s cheap but kind of worthless—it goes right through you and acts as a laxative. I use magnesium threonine because it gets in the brain better than other forms.
https://jaoa.org/article.aspx?articleid=2673882
As always, do your own confirmation. Probably best to consult with a nutritionist.
Any rational basis to this prediction of market growth?
I’m seeing more growth/investment in effector components of the immune system like t-cells, nk cells and macrophages (the troops) than the higher level dendritic cells (the general).
Happy to be educated on this.
How do you know? My, oh, my, not another epistemologist!
Agree on the garbage in, garbage out situation on the number of covid+ cases, as well as death counts.
It’s a hell of a way to run a pandemic if you’re trying to be guided by reality instead of panic. Since I assume they’re not ignorant of data issues, it looks like they want to generate fear. Early on, the touting of the Gates-WHO 3.4% case fatality rate, without properly putting it in context and pointing out that it was likely a gross overestimation, was a strong indication that they were pushing panic instead of a reasonable response.
The incentives to skew the numbers by hospitals coding as many covid patients as possible seem pretty strong. $13,000 per covid patient, $39,000 per ventilator patient, apparently. Impossible that the patient numbers aren’t significantly affected by that. Have respiratory symptoms bad enough to make you go to the hospital? Another $13,000 covid patient. Especially since you don’t have to forge a positive test result to collect cash.
Not that anyone would be so low as to commit fraud. It’s more an issue of incentives and following guidance.
Most hospital administrators are going to take advantage of all that cash lying around. Take a sociologist or an economist to lunch and ask her about it. Well, maybe in a couple of years.
Add in faulty tests that skew to false positives and one can really get a panic going, especially in the important early days of the outbreak:
Bob’s billion is presumably his, not hers. Things happen, like hot young blondes as one example.
If she “knows” she has an absolutely sure thing, then I find her lack of ambition interesting in a CEO. What gets her out of bed in the morning?
Just a rhetorical—not really interested in speculating on that.
If she “knows” then she should be taking everything she owns to the pawn shop and betting on “Florida Sunshine” in the seventh race at Belmont.
I know Florida Sunshine — good horse but no shoo-in.
Great minds!
Could be both — she believes she has an incredible hand but she’s a lawyer and derisks herself at every chance.
Seems like it’s win-win for her.
Excellent! Much appreciated Lykiri!
Is this video available without having to sign in to Facebook?
I refuse to sign up for that data sucking service that Mr No Privacy runs.
Agree money talks in this instance. More skin in the game would be a positive signal. I look for insider buys and generally ignore insider sells (assume they’re getting a bigger yacht or buying their mistress that very special diamond).
Great sig line CherryTree! Resonates particularly well today —long story but something l’ll chalk up to a particularly striking coincidence. I’m not given to such thoughts normally but I’ve spent much of the day focused on something that I haven’t done in years that makes that quote stand out.
Agreed Doc Logic, it would be good to have open debate with full sharing of information so we can come to our own conclusions. Unfortunately some topics are never going to be freely and honesty discussed and this seems to be one of them. The best we can do is find whatever sources are willing to engage with the material and do the comparisons and evaluations on our own, in a piecemeal fashion over time. The answer will probably be discernible eventually, but that may take quite a while — months, even years.
I had hoped a source I knew might be able to get an candid evaluation from a source she knew but alas, she wasn’t personally close to such an expert who would be willing to give an honest answer, off the record, undoubtedly.
Peace be with you!
With enough live, long-term survivors, even the poorest cook will wow us.
Ok, three mixed metaphors (salvation, tank, bad cook) is enough for me.
Depends on the survival benefit.
As I wrote yesterday:
A major advance in the treatment of an intractable cancer will cover many sins.
To mix metaphors, a major advance against an intractable cancer will be a tank against pea shooter arguments like this.
If the data isn’t there, well, you can figure it out.
Thanks for posting this! The picture of the macrophage was worth it itself. The world is an amazing place.
There is a lot of other interesting stuff here as well, hope to have some time to share more about this soon. Got to get outside and dose up on Vitamin D while the sun is shining!
I would guess that once something like a 911 print becomes known as a thing, whatever thing that is, it’s usefulness is gone, since any internet monkey can now monkey with it.
If it’s still happening, it seems like noise or disinfo.
Disinfo is a key aspect of our reality. Someone earlier was joking about BigFoot. However the story came about originally (BTW, I’m assuming BigFoot isn’t real, in case that isn’t clear, lol), it is now part of disinfo campaigns, just like Paul McCartney is dead and replaced with a double, Flat Earth, faked Apollo landing, and UFO-related little grey men.
The zoo keepers like keeping their monkeys distracted and entertained.
Just an opinion...discard immediately.
Won’t have a chance to read the paper just yet, but will be looking for how far they went toward validation of causation over association in the relationships they identified. One assumes that would happen, them being scientists and all, but people misuse big data all the time.
Even if they stopped at association, that is not a short argument. It is still a positive step forward.
If anyone has read it and knows, would be interested in hearing your thoughts.
That seems overly pessimistic, and I’m not the rose-colored type.
Enemies who distrust each other come to agreement all the time. US-China trade deal. Multiple US-Soviet arms deals. Even mob bosses cut deals to get in on the action of a new vice, or so I’m told.
A major advance in the treatment of an intractable cancer will cover many sins.
The key thing is the major advance. And so we wait, watching paint dry unto death, for TLD.
Try repeating “you are getting sleepy” after the word “dead.” I hear that helps.
Are you trying to do some kind of advanced, reverse neurolinguistic programming with the constant repetition of the word “dead”?
I’m with you on that! I’m not interested in doing something stupid and dying.
There are a couple of things I’d die for but some opinion I came to based on crappy data and conflicting reports isn’t one of them.
Thanks for the laugh! I hear it’s good for the immune system.
Fauci Backed Wuhan Lab with Millions of Dollars for Risky Coronavirus Research
Story finally made it to Newsweek today, though it has been bouncing in the belly of the internet for a while. Apologies if already posted by someone before.
I was limiting the claim specifically to getting the new infections down so that hospitals aren’t overwhelmed, resulting in excess deaths from non-treatment/triage decisions. That was the point of “bend the curve.” I believe we have achieved that goal throughout most, if not all of the country.
Right now we are entering a phase of excess death from non-delivery of normal doctor or hospital services, and major damage to society from psychological, social and economic effects of the lockdown.
The steps to reopen in a reasonable way certainly involve a lot of considerations that have to be worked through. I’ll write about some aspects of it in the days to come.
Although I’m fairly certain we can make some progress towards opening up society in some kind of rational manner, I am concerned that there is more going on with covid than meets the eye, in terms of how the disease progresses and how it affects us. Honestly, I have no interest in dying just yet, nor do I wish to advocate for something that could result in some kind of preventable disaster.
But locking society down is going to have devastating consequences as well, that may be more predictable than the covid screwball we’ve got thrown at us.
No easy answers. Good to keep collecting data and listening to all sides.
Latest Computer Model Predicts Between 0 And 12.6 Billion New COVID-19 Deaths By Summer
https://babylonbee.com/news/latest-cdc-computer-modeling-predicts-between-0-and-126-billion-new-covid-19-deaths-by-summer
(In case it isn’t obvious, that is satire. Not being condescending. Some people are satire-blind.)
Actually this whole pandemic thing is going to be a great opportunity to learn a lot about how the world works if you keep your eyes and mind open.
One obvious thing is not to put too much faith in models unless you understand how they were built and what assumptions went into them. Trusting experts isn’t really going to cut it if the issue is important to you.
———————-
Minor update to prior “millions dead” post. I was thinking of the field hospital in Seattle. I haven’t read anything about the field hospital in Central Park recently. Not sure if the LGBTQA+* activists were successful in rejecting Christians bearing gifts.
https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/04/09/seattles-army-built-field-hospital-is-coming-down-without-treating-a-single-patient/
I believe the model that predicted millions and millions of dead was proven wrong. If I’m not mistaken, it was revised significantly downward within days of release. In fact, the prediction for the very next day was wrong. A Cambridge degree isn’t worth as much as it used to be it seems, even if the price goes up 6% a year in a sub-2% world.
As a general rule of thumb, when your leaders are stoking fear, they are misleading you. Something to consider.
Where is Roosevelt when you need him?
Something else to consider. The original rationale, offered in the face of bodies gonna be piled in the streets, was to social distance/lockdown so that we could BEND THE CURVE. Why? So that our hospitals weren’t overwhelmed.
Mission accomplished.
The two navy hospital ships are empty. The tents set up in Central Park are empty. McCormick Place in Chicago is empty. Hospitals all around the country have a lot of excess capacity.
Why aren’t we loosening up? Are we gonna to commit economic and social suicide while we wait for a vaccine against a virus that may be impossible to create? Where’s the AIDS vaccine? How about the common cold vaccine? Cancer vaccines? Man, these things can take time, and in the end might not even work!
I think I just convinced the shorts it’s time to loosen up!
I’m not saying there won’t be a successful vaccine, just that, given all the factors that need to be taken into account, it may not make sense to wait a year or two in our hidey holes, especially since we achieved our initial goal.