Study confirms vitamin D protects against colds and flu (2017)

[ps07]

I was looking at the temp and humidity of cities effected and most were in the under 20C 50% humidity band. Maybe sunny weather makes a diff given the vitamin D connection.

[troydavis]

Here’s an analysis of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22563932 (“High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of COVID-19”):

> One degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower R by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively.

[ankit219]

That would be bad news for UK and could be good news for India, Indonesia, and some African and South American countries

[fnord123]

It's quite obviously spicy food that helps the most. Or rather its my excuse to eat everything spicy for the next month.

[david_draco]

Ah, Linus Pauling was just one letter off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C_and_the_common_cold

[confeit]

Vitamin C, taken orally, reduces length of cold with 8% in adults, and 12% in children.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10796569

Vitamin C deficiency makes you more susceptible to the cold and severe infections.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16988135

Vitamin C has shown inhibitory effect in chickens for avian coronavirus.

https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/52/6/1049/731701

Chinese are testing intravenous Vitamin C for treating COVID-19 with promising results for reducing cytokine-induced damage to the lungs.

https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=2...

I am really not sure why news organizations all around the world feel the need to debunk Vitamin C usage for novel coronavirus. For instance: https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/03/09/coronavirus-its-time-... . Their conclusions all amount to: washing hands is better, you may get a tummy ache, and don't believe folk remedies.

[majkinetor]

He was not off.

Vitamin C is probably the only well known anti-viral agent used by basically entire planet.

I suggest anybody to take several grams of C, in divided doses (mandatory) all the time, particularly now (also inform your elders). There is no downside to this, there can only be neutral or positive effects (to anybody jumping about oxalate levels, please stop your thoughts now).

Pauling also claimed you need to take bunch of other vitamins in his books - 25K IU A, 5K D etc... so he was not mistaken. If it was only about vitamin C, he would not call his medicine orthomolecular but probably ascorbatomolecular ... His claims on C were never tested (not in the doses he used, but using x10-x100 times lower doses). What happend then was not medicine, but politics.

[Khelavaster]

That's why we warehouse patients in hospitals without sunlight exposure.

[neuronic]

You could couple disinfecting against MRSA with vitamin D production by bombarding patients (and microorganisms) with UV rays.

Also maybe invest in the skin cancer department.

[easytiger]

There used to be outdoor wards when dealing with tb patients not very long ago. Seems medieval now

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/6571543.stm

[senectus1]

would be interesting to see how really dark black people with high natural sun insulation are fairing. I mean its armchair biology but you could theorize that people with very dark black skin that work in office and dont see much sunlight would be more susceptible to the coldflu seasons...

I dont remember seeing anything like that, and one of my workmates from Kenya, who has been told that her Vit D levels are too low in winter (by her GP) and that she should go for walks at lunchtime to get them up a bit, doesn't seem to get especially hammered by the cold/flu season.

That is a anecdotal data pool of (1) though :-P