I was doing some further research, though, and it seems that the specific correlational studies called out (the LessWrong quoted ones) may actually be fraudulent:
Authors of the Indonesia study have no other history of papers, are claimed to now be deceased (… of COVID)
New Orleans study has n=20
Philippines study was authored by a single doctor in his 20s with a radiology background
This was a bit concerning to me; the first and third are very widely cited, e.g. by Joe Rogan on his podcast.
The further balance of evidence once again convinced me, such as this meta-analysis (which specifically does call out the first and third as possible frauds).
I think it’s best addressed by noting this in the future when it comes up—can’t be going back and editing weekly news posts. I’d be more worried if I didn’t still firmly believe the same conclusion anyway.
Another interesting piece of evidence is a study on homeless people in Boston (who would likely not be vitamin D deficient because more outdoor time):
“100% of 147 COVID-19 positive subjects were asymptomatic.”
Source, which doesn’t really make the connection: Baggett, T. P., Keyes, H., Sporn, N. & Gaeta, J. M. COVID-19 outbreak at a large homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing. medRxiv 2020.04.12.20059618 (2020) doi:10.1101/2020.04.12.20059618.
A more-studied effect on Vitamin D is that of skin color. This is especially seductive since it’s well-established e.g. Black Americans suffer Covid disproportionately, and also are deficient in Vitamin D disproportionately. But the effect seems to disappear after adjusting for confounders:
The skin color study confirms that vitamin D doesn’t protect against infection. But I don’t see it saying anything clear about how much harm a person suffers if they’re infected.
Just found the New Orleans study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075838v1 , I believe. This was posted early on (April 28th) with a very small sample size (n=20), so I’m discounting this rather heavily now.
I was doing some further research, though, and it seems that the specific correlational studies called out (the LessWrong quoted ones) may actually be fraudulent:
Authors of the Indonesia study have no other history of papers, are claimed to now be deceased (… of COVID)
New Orleans study has n=20
Philippines study was authored by a single doctor in his 20s with a radiology background
This was a bit concerning to me; the first and third are very widely cited, e.g. by Joe Rogan on his podcast.
The further balance of evidence once again convinced me, such as this meta-analysis (which specifically does call out the first and third as possible frauds).
I think it’s best addressed by noting this in the future when it comes up—can’t be going back and editing weekly news posts. I’d be more worried if I didn’t still firmly believe the same conclusion anyway.
Another interesting piece of evidence is a study on homeless people in Boston (who would likely not be vitamin D deficient because more outdoor time):
“100% of 147 COVID-19 positive subjects were asymptomatic.”
Source, which doesn’t really make the connection:
Baggett, T. P., Keyes, H., Sporn, N. & Gaeta, J. M. COVID-19 outbreak at a large homeless shelter in
Boston: Implications for universal testing. medRxiv 2020.04.12.20059618 (2020)
doi:10.1101/2020.04.12.20059618.
That’s intriguing. Another news article on Covid/Homeless, I’d love to see more evidence: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-21/why-has-covid-spared-l-a-homeless-people
A more-studied effect on Vitamin D is that of skin color. This is especially seductive since it’s well-established e.g. Black Americans suffer Covid disproportionately, and also are deficient in Vitamin D disproportionately. But the effect seems to disappear after adjusting for confounders:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871402120301156?via%3Dihub#tbl3
The skin color study confirms that vitamin D doesn’t protect against infection. But I don’t see it saying anything clear about how much harm a person suffers if they’re infected.