Sunday 7 June 2020

Covid-19 & Vitamin D – progress?



Lake Geneva, looking east
May 2020 was a strange month. At the beginning of the month the pandemic in Europe had reached its peak, and in many countries it virtually finished by the end on the month. The cumulative deaths had reached a plateau, as for example in Switzerland. Additional deaths from Covid-19 had virtually come to an end: the Swiss epidemic, among others, was effectively over.

It had been recognised early in the pandemic in the UK, USA and Sweden that people of black African and Asian ethnicity (BAME) were over-represented in critical care and fatal Covid-19 disease. This was automatically attributed to socio-economic disadvantage. However, at the end of March and during April the UK had experienced the deaths of 25 doctors from Covid-19, and 24 of these were of BAME. This was key finding, the vital anomaly or paradox, the observation that generates a new and powerful understanding.



The government accepted with some reluctance that excess BAME deaths were due to socio-economic disadvantage, and appointed committees to "look into it", kicking the can down the road. The inevitable long time-scale made it obvious that this approach had no hope of reducing BAME or other deaths during the pandemic. We just watched people die, about 500 per day. What a waste. What a tragedy.



The BAME groups within the UK similarly showed no sense of urgency. The agenda appeared to be automatic, that the cause of the excess deaths was "racism". The groups had an awareness of racism and socio-economic disadvantage, and general sociological issues. They would have had no knowledge of biological science. How sociological issues and racism could be solved during the timescale of the pandemic was a mystery, but again there was and still is no obvious imperative to actively prevent Covid-19 deaths. 

There is much evidence to indicate that Vitamin D deficiency is responsible for the high incidence of BAME Covid-19 deaths. It requires a knowledge of biological science and cytogenetics, but with that and other information it is just a matter of "joining the dots". 

In this way it is possible to obtain a clear picture that is not "racism".


But why were the government medical and scientific advisors unable to join the dots? And what about the medical journals and colleges? The published evidence was readily available.

The lack of a sense of urgency has been astounding. We were in the midst of a serious pandemic with many deaths, and we were well aware of what was happening. It was as though we were standing on a beach when we received a warning of an impending tsunami. Rather than immediately heading inland to high ground, we would appoint a committee!

BAME doctors are not socio-economically disadvantaged, nor do they live in overcrowded houses. They have a wide variety of ethnic origins with great deal of genetic diversity. But the thing that they have in common is inherited skin pigmentation. It is, or it should be, well-known that pigmented skin is very inefficient at producing vitamin D by the action of the sun. As a result BAME people have on average blood vitamin D levels only half that of the white population, and even they have levels that are lower than desirable. 

Everyone knows that vitamin D is something to do with bones and that deficiency leads to rickets in children. Very few people seem to know that vitamin D is essential for the escalation of immunity in response to serious infection. Some doctors must know this, especially those close to the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientist. But from them, there has not been a whisper of what might have helped. They watch as the disaster unfolds. The Chief Scientist, Sir Patrick Vallance, stated at the end of April that we would do well if the number of deaths were less than 20,000. At more than 40,000 he must feel like a failure. but at least it is less than 500,000, the worst case predicted by Professor "Lockdown" Neil Ferguson!




I am know of many doctors and others who are aware of the potential of vitamin D to boost immunity at this vital time, and the frustrations that they have had in failing to bring this to national consciousness. The silence from this "at the top" is not easy to understand, when at this time of national emergency we might expect our leaders to seize an opportunity to control the illness and death resulting from the epidemic. 

We have seen early warnings sent from the Far East, from the Philippines and Indonesia, that described that someone with a blood vitamin D level greater than 30ng/ml (75nmol/L) will have about a 95% chance of survival from Covid-19 and a minute chance of death, whereas someone below these limits will have about a 90% chance of critical or fatal illness. A compilation of studies has shown  how critical is this level of 30ng/ml (75nmol/L). We can see this in the figure below, that when blood vitamin D level id below 30ng/ml the death rate is high, but it drops suddenly when the blood level is above this. I will explain the mechanism of this in a future Blog post.



The medico-political establishment in the UK has taken no notice of these studies. They have been critical of them for not being "peer reviewed", or "not randomised controlled trials", or "only observational", or "there is no proof". I will go into these absurdities in a future post, but for now it is as well to remember that the evidence that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer was also "observational". The attitude of the medico-political establishment brings to mind once again the response to the news of an approaching tsunami with an expected 40,000 casualties.



There has been another result from the Far East, this time from Singapore. In this study patients on admission to hospital with Covid-19 were randomly allocated to standard treatment or standard treatment plus treatment with a combination of Vitamin D, Magnesium, and Vitamin B12. Those on just the standard treatment had a significant disadvantage as judged by deterioration and need for oxygen therapy.



Although there was official silence about Vitamin D, word began to spread about its protective potential. The important step was paying attention to the deaths of the 24 BAME doctors, that the startling number of their excess deaths could only only be explained by inherited skin pigmentation and consequent vitamin D deficiency. The message seem to have spread very rapidly among BAME doctors,  and they were of course a group of people who were at high risk of death during the epidemic. Self-preservation is more important than "peer review" if you are on a beach when there is a warning of a tsunami (sorry to repeat the analogy for the second time).

A strange thing happened to me in early May. I needed petrol for my chain-saw (not for my car as I was "locked down" in the house). I went to the local petrol station and when I was paying, I asked the ethnic Asian manager Sajid, who I know well, if he takes vitamin D. He had never heard of it and so I gave him advice concerning his ethnicity and the imperative to avoid vitamin D deficiency during this pandemic. His colleague arrived and so he asked his colleague to make a FaceBook movie of me repeating what I had told him. This I did, unfortunately in my gardening clothes and without any forethought. However he sent it to his friends and it was then cascaded with perhaps viral spread. I received notice from ethnic Asian friends in London, the South East and South West of England and also from Dubai, that they had seen the movie. I was also told by friends in my locality that they had seen the movie, and they had also seen my comments reported in the local daily newspaper the Lancashire Telegraph.  


Sorry – the movie does not seem to work on the Blog

I was also told that "all" the local doctors in Blackburn are now taking vitamin D and recommending it to their patients. It is noticeable that the death rate from Covid-19 is lower in Blackburn than in neighbouring industrial towns with a large ethnic Asian population. 



It is also notable that deaths of BAME doctors has come to an end, the last death being on May 2nd in Ramsbottom, quite close to where I live. It appears that  that official ignorance and silence can be bypassed by a grassroots movement aided by traditional local newspapers and especially by social media. This appears to have happened within the BAME medical community in the UK: it is likely that the end of their deaths is because the great majority are now taking a vitamin D supplement.



Had this been "official" it could have been within a research programme, but it is just silent and although effective we are not really learning from it. However a retrospective survey could be undertaken to determine how many of the BAME doctors had started to take a vitamin D supplement during the pandemic, and especially during April 2020.

Although our Prime Minister tells us that we have "world-beating" something or other and that we are "beating" Covid-19, although observation leads to a different conclusion. Covid-19 is beating us. However the epidemic will subside as the population develops immunity. The UK is now fourth in the league of the most deaths per million population. Tiny and unfortunate San Marino heads the list. It is a tragedy for a nation (on the Adriatic coast of Italy) that has a population of only 33,400 and 42 Covid-19 deaths, 1257 per million. Also Andorra in the Pyrenees, with a population of 77,000 has had 51 deaths, 660 per million. The nations with deaths rates greater than 200 per million are shown in the figure below.



Of larger countries, Belgium has recorded 826 deaths per million and the UK 588 per million, just ahead of Spain and Italy. With 50,000 deaths the UK cannot really be considered to be "winning". Of course the mathematical model predicted a worst scenario 500,000 deaths. This was hardly sophisticated maths but primary school sums: 

If three quarters of the population of 65 million develop the illness, how many approximately will this be? Answer 50 million. If 1% of them die, how many will die? Answer 500,000. Thank you Neil Ferguson, professor mathematical biology and government advisor (now resigned).

What this means is that we can now regard 50,000 deaths as "winning", as it only one tenth of the absurd prediction. Remember that 200,000 died in the UK as the result of the terrible Spanish flu of 1918-19. About 30,000 in the UK died from the Asian Flu pandemic in 1957-58, and a maximum estimation of 80,000 from the Hong Kong Flu in 1968-69. 

We should have expected that during the 50 years since the last major pandemic, medical science would have thought of ways of protecting the population from serious and fatal death from what turned out to be Covid-19. Medical science has achieved that, but it appears to be too difficult for the medical scientists to understand or explain it to their political masters. Is it ignorance or is it ignoring that has kept the vital secret of the power of vitamin D to be withheld from the public?

What about the next inevitable pandemic of a virus that remains at present in its non-human animal host? How are we going to prepare for that?

During the past two weeks I have been working very hard with Professor David Anderson. We have written a book, which is now being prepared for release as an eBook, and later as a printed version.














20 comments:

  1. Grant WB, Boucher BJ. (2020) Vitamin D deficiency due to skin pigmentation and diet may explain much of the higher rates of COVID-19 among BAME in England. BMJ comments, June 6, 2020. https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1548/rr-22

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    1. Thanks for the excellent link. Now how do you get Matt Hancock to read it!

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    2. Thank you so much for Sharing this information. Suzanne Lockhart, Author of Maddiet Best Selling Book, has been shouting from the roof tops this very information about the importance of Vitamin D and has been blatantly ignored and has had her posts buried. Please shout loud and clear, this has to be heard by everyone, not only the BAME Community. 20,000 Residents in elderly care homes have died. Could some of them been saved if they had been given high dozes of Vitamin D At the very start of the pandemic? Will we ever know?

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  2. Nice Blog, DG, and it has been a real pleasure to work with you on the book. I think that Joseph and Josephine Public, when they read it, will realise how much this ‘let’s take back control’ Government, and its advisers have let them down. Why accept a simple and almost free solution (Vitamin D supplements) when, courtesy of Bill and Melinda Gates and a vaccine you can make it infinitely more complicated and so make infinitely more money?

    The simple fact is that the Vitamin D pre-Immune defence system, which depends entirely on the Sunshine Vitamin (in short supply at the best of times up north) is essential to fight off any viruses new to our species. The science is very simple but the political psychology is not. So we should beware of sickly-smiling Big Billed and Big Pharma’d crocodiles, lurking in a Big Money Pond.

    By the way, is it just a coincidence that GSK has its main Vaccine Research Laboratories at Barnard Castle, recognised among No 10 advisers recovering from Covid-19 as being one of the best locations to see if you can still see well enough to drive home? And presumably also, if still cross-eyed, to continue to double-cross the Public.

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    1. Stop patronising the public, some of us are capable of joining the dots without the help of 'professionals'. Your anti-toryism needs to be kept in check.

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  3. My good friend Dr Timothy Dornan wrote to me as follows....Did you know that, in the North-East, ‘Barnard Castle’ is equivalent to ‘Porkie pie’ as of telling a porkie. This was revealed on that unimpeachable social commentary, ‘Have I got news for you?’!

    What goes around comes around it seems

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    Replies
    1. You do know 'Have I got news for you' isn't a factual programme but a satirical knock the establishment show that doesn't have to stick to facts but makes things up for a laugh?

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  4. Looking forward to the e-book !

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  5. Thank you for your own explanations, but it's look like you don't know how the Rota and allocation in our shifts work!Whatever it is admitting that during the pandemic pick more BAME were in front line more than Others in all essential work.

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    1. Which would have increased their chances of exposure but not their vilnerability. You seem to be discounting D in favour of racism. Exactly the problem I have highlighted, an unwillingness to accept anything but racism as an axplanation. But an inability to use racism as a logical explanation for an increased death rate, which vitamin D answers perfectly with science.

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  6. Thanks for all the information here. I just disagree with the statement 'It requires a knowledge of biological science and cytogenetics, but with that and other information it is just a matter of "joining the dots".' I am not a doctor, have only a lay person's knowledge, but I joined up the dots weeks ago, and was asking why don't they mention Vitamin D to the TV, and writing emails to media [BBC are far too keen on it being racism by this government which they clearly despise over Brexit] and the Health Dept. without even a reply to show someone read them. Plenty of people know the role of D in the immune system as well as bone growth, sadly it appears this awareness doesn't reach to the BAME community. I think the reason is political, too many want it to be racism to consider anything else. Yet even the different outcomes follow the melanin! 'Black' ie African, fare worse than Asian, much paler.

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  7. I don't agree with vitamin d story alone

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  8. Does this mean that women with Osteopoenia or osteoporosis who have been subscribed extra Calcium with added Vit D to facilitate the absorption of the calcium are actually in a good position to avoid a fatal dose of Covid despite their bone deficiencies? Looking for the positives here!

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  9. Sorry I meant prescribed! Very interesting article and utterly baffling that this information has not been made more available to the general public.

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  10. Sadly, we should also be considering not just the doctors of BAME origin who died, but also those who have been left seriously affected by the outcome of Covid. I know of one case personally, but I am sure there are many more...

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  11. Started giving my father in his 80's 10,000iu of vitamin D per day when the lock down started, within weeks 8 years of knee pain disappeared.

    Friend in his 50's taking 4,000iu per day, his back pain 80% less within 2 weeks

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  12. Thank you for sharing such valuable and helpful information and knowledge. This can give us more insights! Keep it up. I would love to see your next update.
    vitamin d shots near me

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  13. I worked as a vaccine specialist. I came across the vit d information back in 2005 when writing a presentation on pandemic flu! Been taking supplements ever since. After the first 3 doctors died I spotted the issue re covid. Emailed sky news but no response.

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  14. I am 73 years old. I have kept my vitamin D serum level between 76 ng/ml and 120 ng/ml for more than six years by taking 10,000 iu or 15,000 iu of D3 daily. This dosage equals 250 mcg and 375 mcg. I have the 25 (OH) D test annually. I have had only two colds during this time. Three weeks ago I started taking 30,000 iu (750 mcg) daily to avoid covid-19. I take vitamin K2 200 mcg and a good multi-mineral supplement with this larger dose. In the USA doctor prescribed vitamin D is D2. D2 is much less effective than D3. You will not get your serum blood levels up to a protective level by supplementing with D2. I am trying to get my serum D blood level up to around 150 ng/ml. Below 300 ng/ml is safe from what I have read. I know that 30,000 iu or 750 mcg may sound like a lot but it is less than 1 mg and 1 mg of D3 is really a tiny amount.

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  15. Positive site, where did u come up with the information on this posting? I'm pleased I discovered it though, ill be checking back soon to find out what additional posts you include. covid 19 testing sites

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