Last night I had my first full on interaction with the anti-masker community, and it was wacky. I attended a country commissioners meeting via Zoom, because they’ve been in the news lately for (3 of the 7 of them) refusing to wear masks during their in person meetings in the county offices.
The meeting itself was what you’d expect of a zoom meeting with a bunch of people who aren’t used to it. But the chat, oy, the chat. Someone claimed that states without mask mandates had better outcomes and listed ND, FL and others. I posted per capita death rates for ND compared to ME (where we are) and got accused of cherry picking. So I posted FL numbers, and got asked if I learned that in socialist school. 
There was a lot of chatter about masks being socialist. When I asked (politely) what about it was related to socialism, I got a bunch of, “the Jews were told it was just a piece of cloth, do your research.” Or, “when the gov’t tells you to do it, it’s socialism.”
They don’t even get that masks are more about protecting others. They kept saying, “if you’re fearful, stay home,” and, “if you want to wear a mask, wear a mask!” It seemed futile by now, but I tried explaining about masks protecting others, and asked how they’d feel if their food service worker didn’t wash their hands after using the bathroom. They said if I need gov’t to tell me to wash my hands, I’m an idiot.
So, I guess they made their points about masks, if they need the gov’t to tell them to wear one…
For many years, limited studies – ones that Big Pharma showed no interest in expanding – had indicated that Vitamin D was useful both in warding off respiratory infections and in treating a wide variety of chronic auto-immune diseases such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis by damping down inflammatory responses of the kind that often overwhelm hospitalised Covid patients. But many doctors and politicians were stuck in an old paradigm – one rooted in the 1950s that viewed Vitamin D exclusively in terms of bone health.
We discussed something along these lines way back in early 2020. It is pretty widely known that vit D supplementation markedly decreases risk of contracting respiratory viruses by 50% or more. Obviously, data on treatment, specifically for covid, is new and needs to be evaluated carefully so we don’t get another hydroxychloroquine situation. This guy seems a little dramatic in his presentation, though.
Also, and I CANNOT emphasize this enough:
Do not start dosing yourself with D vitamins.
Talk to your ‘doctor’. Then, get a second opinion from another doctor.
D vitamins can be easily overdosed.
True. The studies we talked about way back then showed benefit peaked at 400-800 IU per day, and with high doses actually increased risk of infection. Obviously, YMMV and individual variation is huge, so don’t take internet medicine as gospel!
People have to remember D vitamins, unlike vitamin C (ascorbic acid), can accumulate in your body. They are fat-soluble. All fat-soluble vitamins are problematic for this reason when you suddenly start dosing yourself. That it’s available freely does not mean it can be taken indiscriminately, and by everyone.
A, D, E and K are all fat soluble and have that problem of accumulating in fatty tissues, with A being the most toxic. (Famously, polar bear liver is high enough in vit A to kill an adult human.) But I have seen toxicity from water-soluble ones as well. Most recently, 2 kids gave themselves transient peripheral neuropathy by megadosing on B6. This was apparently related to something on the internet about bodybuilding. So, yeah, “some is good, more must be better” is not a good thought process.
This left me speechless. If your translation engine of choice doesn’t do the trick for you: doctor, symptomatic with Covid-19, treated patients without even wearing a mask. Reason: obviously covidiot arsehole. Fuck him, and revoke his license.
That’s really bad.
Now, for something good:
I hope to see this in several languages, soon.
My brother-in-law’s family came down with a nasty bout of diarrhea, bad enough in their <1-year-old to call the doctor, who immediately said “Covid test now.” “But it’s not a cough…”
Narrator: it was Covid.
This is EXACTLY what I expect to happen when kindergartens fill next week in many parts of Germany. Parents will even send their kids with those symptoms. And / or their siblings.
(I know people who sent their kids siblings to school and kindergarten while they have a clear norovirus case at home, and know it.)
Every little way they can hurt us.
It is a national problem, it shouldn’t be either the responsibility or the right of states and counties to fund programs or decide on policy. This was broken under the last president, but should changed now. Covid does not respect political boundaries.
Unfortunately it does tend to be how most things are done: the Fed drops off pallets of cash or whatsits and then the State “administers” them, but typically there are strings, and here there are none, so Red states stick it to their blue areas and Blue states, well, try to administer things responsibly, meaning their Red areas do okay. All part of the plan.
And the plan is to kill Democrats and minorities generally.
I think the plan is more generally to kill everyone indiscriminately. Most of the people who vote GOP are engaged in self-harm.
Having Covid policy dictated at the top is no panacea, as our friends in the UK will confirm, but examples like the one you posted show that the alternative is worse.
(We’re having a taste of this at the local level here: our legislature is contemplating a bill that would prevent the individual islands from implementing their own policy. Unfortunately, this is mainly directed at one of the islands where the mayor wants to maintain a stricter policy than the state’s, including keeping the quarantine for arriving passengers. The legislature thinks this impedes tourism, which of course it does.)
which is what we get in a typical generic multivitamin pill
Unfortunately I did not find the English language version of this BBC article, but they say the Chinese vaccine called Coronavac would have an advantage over other vaccines because it uses a different approach.
According to the article, the Coronavac was made with inactivated whole viruses, which is why it manages to combat the new variants that have emerged in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. The other vaccines are based on fragments of DNA and these variants managed to circumveit this protection.
