The biggest issue i think it's availability. When this was hitting the new York area, vitamin d was impossible to find on the shelves. It's available now, but if we start putting out mass messaging to take vitamin d then supply will run dry again. Shady unsafe supplies will then start showing up to make a buck.

If the costs are low, then the free supply chain won’t cost much to create. If the public health savings are greater than the costs, it may be better to just mail free supplements to people than mail them postcards advising they go out and purchase them (advice most people will ignore, no matter how low the cost).

How many people will need to be paid to operate this free supply chain to provide a good that is perfectly well-supplied inexpensively privately now? How many to answer questions, field calls about missed shipments, lost pills, changes of address, etc?

The answer to every problem shouldn’t be “create a new government-funded agency to make this happen ‘for free’”. Mr Market isn’t the answer for every single thing, but sometimes it’s fine to let existing private supply chains operate. Supplying cheap dietary supplements seems to me like an area where that’s the case.

It may need to be added to SNAP/WIC; that’s a reasonable task for government to busy itself supporting this.

Why? If it’s cheap on a per-dose basis and has the potential for major social benefit (saved lives and avoided healthcare costs) that seems like exactly the sort of program that would be an efficient use of government resources. There’s a clear, measurable, and nearly immediate return on our investment.

Compare that to the cost of lockdown. To e cost of an ICU nurse. To the cost of a vaccine?

The point of making it free is so everyone will have it - not just because of the price.