AndrewBissell

> Given that a lot of the COVID morbidity and mortality is the cytokine storm rather than the infection itself, I wouldn't consider it a priori clear that Vitamin D helps, is neutral, or harms patients who get COVID.

Autocrine vitamin D signaling switches off pro-inflammatory programs of cells: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01080-3

> This is not as strong a conclusion as it first sounds, for two reasons.

1. This says nothing about Vitamin D as a cure once you got infected. It might work, or it might not, but this study simply does not address the question at all.

Huh? Everyone I know who thinks vitamin D might be helpful says you need to supplement with it on a consistent, ongoing basis, not try to take big catch-up doses once you get sick or wind up in the hospital. Given how safe and cheap it is (and that adequate vitamin D levels may be associated with a range of other improved health outcomes as well), even a 25% reduction in those risks would be a big deal.

> Should it be necessary, Pfizer and BioNTech would be able to redesign their shot within 6 weeks and ship initial batches within 100 days, BioNTech added.

I call this the "No True Lockdown" argument. If they fail to indefinitely prevent significant outbreaks (and in nearly every case they have), well, it just means they weren't implemented soon enough. Even if they drag on for weeks and months with zero cases, only to have an outbreak at the slightest loosening of restrictions. I guess the idea is that if the entire world did this at once the virus would disappear? Completely unworkable, and almost surely false, given the existence of animal reservoirs.

Your entire framing of these policy choices as inevitable and the only option is baseless. Australia and New Zealand used to be held up as the shining lights of "just act fast enough and you can avoid the need for any sustained restrictions" and now we are seeing just how well kicking the can in that way actually works, and the lengths that must be gone to keep kicking it.

"limited downsides"

https://news.yahoo.com/remote-learning-led-to-catastrophic-l...

https://www.wfp.org/stories/hunger-pandemic-food-security-re...

https://gazette.com/business/nearly-40-of-u-s-small-business... https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-imp...

Every one of these language toolbox books should come with a disclaimer for new devs up front about how the mark of a good craftsmen is knowing when to use the tools, when to bend or break their rules and guidelines, etc. I know it certainly might have saved me a fair bit of grief and oddly written code.

Somehow I knew it must have been a dependency injection advocate who came up with the idea that enums are a code smell.

"schismogenesis"

I'm just curious, did you happen to pick up that term from Jasun Horsley?

Yes, whereas we only get the raw unadulterated truth from our media outlets and tech censors here in the West.

In most countries there is also a delay between when people are moved from the "unvaccinated" to "vaccinated" category -- e.g. two weeks post second Pfizer/Moderna dose in the U.S. Those who take only one dose and then do not take the second (for whatever reason) remain in the "unvaccinated" group. It would be interesting to see how this would affect the picture in their model in combination with (or independent from) delayed death reporting.

Just want to say, I really appreciate you providing these archive links on my submissions.