Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

Re:Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Cov... by hannob on Tuesday December 01, 2020 @02:55AM (#25263327)

There's a reason medical tests aren't made easily accessible. The science of when regular testing something helps is complicated. If you test for things that are rare you might cause more harm than good by doing mass testing, because you might overwhelmingly treat people with false positive test results.

There's a lively debate around various cancer screening initiatives, which often don't have any good evidence that they overall do more good than harm. The same mechanisms are true for lots of other medical tests.

Ultimately a medical test should be treated like any other medical intervention: Only do it if you have scientific evidence that it helps the patient.

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Re:Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Cov... by bdavisx on Tuesday December 01, 2020 @10:52AM (#25266198)

I agree with you on "detection tests" (not sure what a Dr would call them) - but checking for vitamin deficiencies would be more of a preventative type test, and everyone should have those probably once a year or every X years, but that would lower insurance profits, so they don't happen in the US anyway.

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