Oh, that’s awfully interesting. I’ve been going out and telling literally everyone I know to buy Vitamin D; is that not universalizable? Is this a “n95 masks” situation where we think it is effective but want to keep mum to protect the most at-risk?
Thinking a bit more—on the margin, it feels like the world should use more VitD (both against Covid and in general) so I’ll continue to beat on my drum. I’d also love to see how you arrived at the few tons per year conclusion!
As of 2010, The vitamin D3 average price was 50$/MIU (million international units) and the market volume was 97.3 ton (Approx. 20% human consumption and 80% for animal farming). At 500,000 IU per gram, the production of vitamin for human consumption was enough to cover the daily value (800 IU/day) for 0.44% of the entire human population (7.5 billion). If you wanted to give a higher dose of around 10,000 IU/day, you could only do it for 0.04% of the population. This means the current production levels would need to be increased between 225-2800 times the current capacity to fulfill everyone’s requirements, or 45-560 if you reroute the production for animals to humans.
In my opinion scaling up the current industrial production of vitamin D3 supplements to fulfill the global needs seems infeasible, especially given the current production process based on sheep wool (though industrial extraction from lichen is a promising alternative for scale up). Another option would be promoting vitamin D rich foods like nori algae, but according to my own research nori algae production is hardly going to go up. In Japan (the top producer) one person told me that the seaweed farmers are the only ones allowed to produce it and are limiting the supply to keep the price up. Another one told me most good production sites are in operation already. We would have to start producing it somewhere else.
It may be easier to try convincing people to get more sun. You can get 10,000-20,000 IU of vitamin D from 30-180 minutes of sun exposure in a sunny day depending on your level of skin pigmentation. This would suffice for most people when feasible.
I admit my lack of knowledge on the topic, but I can quote this report: “High dependence on availability of sheep wool as the only source for commercial production act as another restraining factor which is likely to affect lanolin market price trends.”
(Lanolin is the sebaceous secretion from wool from which the vitamin is obtained)
According to this crude estimate, one sheep can support enough vitamin D for several thousand people. There are over a billion sheep, so if all wool went to vitamin D production, it would be enough for several trillion people.
The price of lanolin would likely soar, but that’s a small problem compared to the pandemic.
There’s likely some important constraints on scaling up the manufacturing process, maybe complicated by safety regulations which would be inappropriate for this context.
Something is likely to keep the number of people taking vitamin D well below a billion this winter, but my best guess is that it’s going to be lack of demand rather than major supply constraints.
Maybe the most effective thing would be if there were a vitamin D futures market, to bid up the price to incite more production of it. But at the individual level, I think it makes sense to stock up to increase the price a little bit. If you don’t end up needing it, you could always give/sell it to those who do later. The one I bought is good for 1.5 years.
Oh, that’s awfully interesting. I’ve been going out and telling literally everyone I know to buy Vitamin D; is that not universalizable? Is this a “n95 masks” situation where we think it is effective but want to keep mum to protect the most at-risk?
Thinking a bit more—on the margin, it feels like the world should use more VitD (both against Covid and in general) so I’ll continue to beat on my drum. I’d also love to see how you arrived at the few tons per year conclusion!
As of 2010, The vitamin D3 average price was 50$/MIU (million international units) and the market volume was 97.3 ton (Approx. 20% human consumption and 80% for animal farming). At 500,000 IU per gram, the production of vitamin for human consumption was enough to cover the daily value (800 IU/day) for 0.44% of the entire human population (7.5 billion). If you wanted to give a higher dose of around 10,000 IU/day, you could only do it for 0.04% of the population. This means the current production levels would need to be increased between 225-2800 times the current capacity to fulfill everyone’s requirements, or 45-560 if you reroute the production for animals to humans.
In my opinion scaling up the current industrial production of vitamin D3 supplements to fulfill the global needs seems infeasible, especially given the current production process based on sheep wool (though industrial extraction from lichen is a promising alternative for scale up). Another option would be promoting vitamin D rich foods like nori algae, but according to my own research nori algae production is hardly going to go up. In Japan (the top producer) one person told me that the seaweed farmers are the only ones allowed to produce it and are limiting the supply to keep the price up. Another one told me most good production sites are in operation already. We would have to start producing it somewhere else.
It may be easier to try convincing people to get more sun. You can get 10,000-20,000 IU of vitamin D from 30-180 minutes of sun exposure in a sunny day depending on your level of skin pigmentation. This would suffice for most people when feasible.
What limits scaling up the wool-based production? I’m pretty sure there’s enough wool.
I admit my lack of knowledge on the topic, but I can quote this report: “High dependence on availability of sheep wool as the only source for commercial production act as another restraining factor which is likely to affect lanolin market price trends.”
(Lanolin is the sebaceous secretion from wool from which the vitamin is obtained)
According to this crude estimate, one sheep can support enough vitamin D for several thousand people. There are over a billion sheep, so if all wool went to vitamin D production, it would be enough for several trillion people.
The price of lanolin would likely soar, but that’s a small problem compared to the pandemic.
There’s likely some important constraints on scaling up the manufacturing process, maybe complicated by safety regulations which would be inappropriate for this context.
Something is likely to keep the number of people taking vitamin D well below a billion this winter, but my best guess is that it’s going to be lack of demand rather than major supply constraints.
Maybe the most effective thing would be if there were a vitamin D futures market, to bid up the price to incite more production of it. But at the individual level, I think it makes sense to stock up to increase the price a little bit. If you don’t end up needing it, you could always give/sell it to those who do later. The one I bought is good for 1.5 years.