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Seems like a bad article based on two politicians pointing to what look like small *observational studies* but somehow ignoring the much larger observational study on 500,000 people in the summer which showed no effect
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7204679/ https://twitter.com/a_leesha1/status/1348596424552886273
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7204679/ https://twitter.com/a_leesha1/status/1348596424552886273
Either way, observational studies aren't particularly good evidence. To quote @MedCrisis "Frail people get sick more. Frail people commonly have low vitamin D. The low vitamin D is not why they get sick, the frailty is". You need RCTs for this.
Article even suggests there's no harm from telling everyone to take vitamin D - you can, in fact, have too much. Government should tell people who are deficient to take vitamin D (most people aren't) and that's for normal health reasons, not necessarily anything to do with covid.
The article quotes Rupa Huq claiming that New Zealand has done well with covid because of vitamin D levels. Erm, perhaps it's because they closed down the country to the outside world and stopped the virus getting in to begin with?
Pretty much every new disease someone claims vitamin D is a miracle cure. Puff pieces in the lifestyle section of the Guardian probably aren't going to give a well-rounded overview of the evidence.
And yes, before anyone says anything, fuck Big Pharma, but also fuck Big Supplement - it's a billion pound industry and claims that it's products are beneficial should be equally scrutinized and subject to appropriate caution
Also ffs it's 2021 and journalists are still writing science articles without linking to the studies. Get the fuck outta here.
Perhaps I'm wrong, I'm just a random guy on the internet, but if you don't link to studies why the hell should I assume you've accurately summarized the evidence and that it's high quality?
With notably rare exceptions, like two of the most populous countries on the planet
Anyway, seems like the better story here would be "government's public health communication is so woeful it couldn't even get good information to people even before the coronavirus pandemic and now two random backbenchers are able to do an end-around it for their own pet cause"
