This is an interesting video from 7 months ago. It details how Vit-D activates immunity, including an antiviral protein we produce. (Cathelicidin) Talks about how the nasal mucosa have an enzyme to activte, then use, Vitamin D. How it acts as an inhibitor of pro-inflammatory cytokines and inhibits the cytotoxic effects of T cells and B cells. (Slide at 8 min) Like maybe that young Chinese M.D. who first called out Covid-19 then died of it might have had a better chance had he not been indoors treating patients all the time, then tossed into a Chinese dungeon for interrogation… /snark; it also helps with allergies.
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I think this goes a long way toward explaining the cyclical mature of Influenza and “winter colds”. His chart of vit-D levels by region, with the middle east low, might also help to explain the degree of outbreak in Iran. Covered head to toe in cloth year round, and indoors, now, to great extent. So a low vit-D level and lowered immunity. Below 20 ng/ml is very deficient, and the Middle East has 90% of their population below that level. (Slide at 9 min.) Then a bit of a hoot when Australian dematologists are at 83%. Sunscreen much? (Slide 10:40) At 12 minutes walks through a series of papers / references. I was especially interested in the slide at 20 minutes showing IL-5 cytokine down modulated from about 550 pg/ml to just under 100 pg/ml, and “essentially non-allergic”. The airway contriction vs. not constricted IMHO has significance for Covid-19 treatement.
So get some sun, or supplement your Vit-D. If a family member is stuck in a “facility”, get their level checked.
UPDATE: It looks to me like China, especislly in the north, north Iran, and Europe are short of UV. Especially in the smoggy industrial areas of China. So likely also vitamine D depleted.
Asia UV map
Map from: https://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-app/weathercharts?CONT=asie&MAPS=uv&LOOP=0
Prior Vit-D article: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/03/01/get-sun-take-vit-d/
Musings from the Chiefio 
“A Little Levity to Lighten your Day”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/03/15/a-little-levity-to-lighten-your-day/
Being 70 it looks like the UK is going to ask me to self isolate for my own protection.
Looking forward to getting those rays in the back garden.
Have always felt better with a medium tan. Just don’t overdo it.
Since the vernal equinox is on the 19th, we’re headed into the time of more effective solar vit-D.
Enjoy your yard time :-)
Here in California, it turned to rain and overcast 2 days ago, so I’m back on the bottle… of 2000 IU capsules.
I’m hoping for some warm digging time mid week. I’ve got beans to plant. While my very fast first fresh bits are in (radishes and greens ) for something fresh next month (last salad was yesterday) I’d like to get the 60 day maturity things planted out (presently starts in pots or seed sprouting trays). I really don’t want to just have canned or dry goods next month. Though the frozen will still have some left then if I’m prudent.
@Stephen – Oh, bad luck! I’m not even 69 for a couple of months yet, so am making full use of the freedom while it lasts. Walked around Nottingham this morning, and everything was very quiet – most of us older folk just acting normally with added ‘personal space’, but an increasing number of (mainly) Trent Uni students walking around town wearing facemasks. Oddly, these were mainly young women, despite their being in a minimal-risk group.
Happily no great panic evident, other than stripped shelves in shops where the paper products should be, despite the fact that our local count is now rising. On Friday we had 2 in the city and 3 in the county, now on Monday it’s 5 in the city and 6 in the county, plus 1 death, though the late patient was in his 90s.
Me, I’m packing myself full of Vit.C & D and trusting to my cast-iron constitution, which has seen off 60-odd years’ respiratory offerings and counting. Still being sensible about avoiding crowds (no point tempting Fate), though I’m mischievously wondering whether a good loud cough from an elder male might magically clear me a path … ;-D
Steven Wilde
Being 70 it looks like the UK is going to ask me to self isolate
Congratulations on reaching 3 score years and ten!
The Japanese drug Camostat mesylate apparently blocks a protease needed by Covid-19 to enter lung cells. This it is attracting interest as a possible therapy against the new Coronavirus.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200305132039.htm
I’m dosing myself with C, D and zinc. I’m over 70 too, but I identify as 69. In the UK we are not required to carry id or reveal our age so it can’t be policed. I’m having a restaurant meal tomorrow then acting as sensibly as I can. But I won’t be strictly self-isolating.
My spring vacation in the Carolinas then FL has been canned, or at least postponed. If it’s over before the autumn we might try Portland to Portland ,which will cover all the missing states in my list apart from AK and the afore-mentioned SC.
I suggest that if any group of survivors finally get together again we name the event the first annual Larry Ledwick memorial lunch (breakfast, lunch, brunch, whatever). I regret his passing. I hope we lose no more.
Sadly, Rhoda, we are going to lose more of this lovely, eclectic bunch over the years. We mostly are 60+ and thus over the knee of the survivor curve. It can’t be helped. Come mid-August, it will be two years since my own near death experience. And the span of a man’s years shall be 120.
Weather-wise, locally, it is mid–March and we are having our usual Spring Break weather. Highs in the mid 70s to low 80s, lows in the mid 50s to low 60s. I expect it to last one more week then followed by a cold snap, possibly with a hard freeze. This happened in 2007, killing quite a few trees in the process.
A bit of an update on my experiment with ditching the antihistamines and trying vitamins and herbs instead.
A scratch test long ago showed I am allergic to all but one of the 40 things they tested. When they got to rye grass they immediately packed my arm in ice and gave me an shot of epinephrine….
Well, here in NC the trees are all in bud (highly allergic) and I have a couple of fields full of Abrussi grazing rye. So far the Vitamin B12, D3, C, turmeric curcumin, CBD oil, Nettle leaf & licorice root is working just fine.
No need for antihistamines or pain killers for the arthritis. (%sp O2 is 96 instead of 92-94)
I have not been siting inside either. I have been digging out wooden fence posts, Popping out T-posts and ripping out part buried cattle panels for the last couple of days while working in a field of rye. Also roping goats. — Ever try to rope a goat with a right handed lariat when you are left handed? The sheep at least were easy, the bully goats not so much. The 200+ pound ram, thank goodness is now gracing my new freezer named Ramsholme.
Allergies/asthma and arthritis and high blood pressure and diabetes are ALL chronic inflammatory conditions and comorbidities with the Wuhan virus.
Unfortunately I am blessed with three of the four and would also have type II Diabetes by now if not for friends cluing me in when I was 19. Mismanaged hypoglycemia while you are young will often lead to type II Diabetes when you are older. link
>>>>>>>>
So this test on one old woman found the anti-inflammatories seem to be working at least on me. (As long as I continue to use KCl instead of NaCl for salt the blood pressure remains reasonable.)
@Gail, glad to hear that you have something to do. 8-) As long as you don’t exhaust yourself it is good I guess. At 74 I find it difficult to do the amount of daily work that I did at 65.
I fully understand the allergies thing I’ve been dealing with that since the day I was born, grass pollen&dust and mold spores can quickly have me on the floor like a fish out of water. Hell of a thing for someone born on a farm. My parents were told that I would out grow it, still waiting for that!
The Vitamin route seems to be of great help. C and E are of great help to reduce my sensitivity and inflammation, a bit of “Old Snake Bite” remedy also helps…pg
p.g. I found I actually built immunity to my horse (had her for 27 years) but not for other horses. WEIRD!
And yeah it is a real bitch getting old. I can still lift 50# but the stamina and agility and flexibility are gone.
I am in Rhoda.
On the hording front. I am guilty. I went to Wallyworld today and had to ensure my dog food stock stayed at a month in stock. Lot’s was sold out, but I was able to obtain the no grain one we use. However, when I went down the beer Isle, things were getting a bit slim. I was concerned about future deliveries of my brand which only had 4 cases left in stock. It is Busch Light, so you know its bad. I bought them all (4) and have now enough to get me through an unknown timeframe, dependent upon my exposure to neighbor invasion. Oh, I also got some 12 gauge shells for the only gun I had no ammo for (recent acquisition from a friend who passed) . The manager, who I know fairly well, has told me it has been a constant flow of guns/ammo going out the door. Walmart pretty much got rid of anything even possibly being viewed as an assult rifle or ammo. No more 9mm even? /The interesting thing to me is the last big rush I recall was in response to the gov. trying to take that right away. Now it is because people think they may actually need it. Crazy world right now.
Oh well, it appears the families of the spring breakers who passed through here last weekend, finally figured out there are real issues happening. Round 2 coming soon on the way back. I think I will fill up my pressure sprayer (which I will clean) with water and spray them down when they get here just to mess with them :-)
I do plan on using my FLIR attachment for my phone and my laser temp gun and check their temperature. That will actually mean something after their (I don’t now half of them) journey back here in a NATIONAL EMERGENCY SITUATION !
I just hope they don’t impose state travel restrictions before they move on down the road.
Queue up Dr. Smith! “Oh the Pain!”
One of the guys at the other site put up a tweet by this MIT PhD with a Biological Engineering degree on immune system & immune health. He has 4 PhDs from MIT.
He adds Vitamin A to our arsenal I already mentioned selenium and iodine for thyroid support.
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1djGXQwYkoyJZ
And yes he is correct about the crumbling infrastructure.
WOODEN WATER PIPES:
(Salem is just north of Boston.)
NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/us/18water.html
Aging of Water Mains Is Becoming Hard to Ignore
@EM: check out WUWT for recent info on Chloroquine effectiveness against COVID-19,
@StevenFraser; from what I have read one 500 mg per week just like they used to feed us in Nam would do the trick as a prophylaxis to prevent massive dangerous infection of the virus. After that nearly everyone would be immune. Got to be a much better solution then what they are doing now…pg
Someone at the other site suggested is this Wuhan Virus “…going to be used as the cover for how democrats won the WH in 2020 (ie. through rigged voting)…
….not only in crashing US economy and attacking elderly GOP voter base through biological warfare.
It is all 3 of these things.
1. Crashing the economy
2. Attacking the elderly
3. Rigging the vote in key states”
>>>>>>>>>>
REMEMBER, as David Archibald told us China and Xi HATE AMERICA.
President Trump has put a major crimp in the Communist plans to cripple the USA and takeover the leadership of the world. Belt and road and all that.
The US Government bureaucrats and the US Universities are 90%-95% DEMOCRAT/Socialists if not straight out communists. Flashback: CDC Workers Were “Crying in the Hallways” When Trump Was Elected President and Universities Discriminate Against Conservatives
President Trump is NOT a biologist or a doctor and is therefore FORCED to rely on these Democrat-Progressive ‘Experts’ for advice. People who intensely dislike him and WANT the USA to continue to ‘progress’ towards a socialist vassal state of a totalitarian world government modeled after the European Union.
Wuhan virus as BIOWARFARE
COMMUNIST HYBRID WARFARE
Or how to win against a superior force by using your bag of dirty tricks .
From one of the guys at the other site.
Russian hybrid warfare: what are effects-based network operations and how to counteract them
by: Vitalii Usenko and Dmytro Usenko
Here’s the key ideas I’m looking for onHybridorIrregular warfare:
>>>>>
IS WUHAN CORONA VIRUS AS WEAPON?
hiding the evidence
WHAT IS INTERESTING is the lengths ‘they’ are going to keep the public from knowing about Professor Zhengli Shi of the Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
Now the Chinese (and our media) are even trying to say the USA military planted the virus in Wuhan. This is typical projection that we see the Communists.socialists/Democrats do all the time. BLAME THE OTHER GUY for what you have done or are doing.
Once again:
A novel virus IS A LOUSY WEAPON. It damages you as much as your opponent. The Chinese & Russians are not that stupid.
Calling the WuFlu a weapon is mostly paranoia with added click bait seasoning.
Here’s a meta-analysis of vitamin D as protection against pulmonary infections:
https://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.i6583
@EM: More info on use of Chloroquine today. I think people are getting the message at the national and international level. On the basis of your references, I have bumped up Vit D3 as well.
Nice link, Serioso. I snow-birded in Florida, yet I still took my usual D3 supplement.
Now that I’m home, it’s been grey, rainy, and that miserable 40-ish weather where it’s not so cold as to be Winter, yet not warm enough to be Spring.
Here’s an adder; I’m Type II diabetic and take Metformin. As I understand it, the Metformin “unlocks” the cells so I can make use of sugars instead of leaving them stranded in the bloodstream.
BUT… this novel coronavirus takes advantage of that unlocking mechanism and is more easily able to get into cells because of the diabetes treatment, not just because of diabetes.
So I’ve upped my intake of D3 since I’ve come back ♯♪♫ to the land of the free♫ and the home… of the…
bravegrey ♫♪.Are you doing OK? Are you in the lower risk groups? Be well and keep posting, even though you know you will get hammered when you post on political topics here. It keeps everyone on their toes.
I might add, when you go “off topic” i.e. non-political, you usually bring in some good stuff. You have a bit of that “dig here” mentality on topics that are other than political. It used to surprise me because you rarely venture off the non-political, but you do at times. Now, I expect good stuff when you post on non-political topics, such as this vitamin D3 topic.
@HR; you noticed it too. Serioso acting like a normal human being in the last few comments. Maybe there is hope.
Vitamin C really helps with a bit of E as well, You will notice skin quality improvement as well as a reduction in oxygen demand, easier breathing under stress. And QUIT smoking! Take up chewing gum or something. Give up Tobacco! It is a real killer that will take 20 years off of your life. Users of Tobacco can’t grow Tomatoes or Potatoes because all Tobacco products are contaminated with Mosaic virus that will seriously damage them,,,pg.
p.g.sharrow [said] 19 March 2020 at 7:11 am [GMT] [*]:
Users of Tobacco can’t grow Tomatoes or Potatoes because all Tobacco products are contaminated with Mosaic virus that will seriously damage them
Their impact is worse than that! Without the same meticulous sanitation required for tobacco
addictssmokers to have any success with the above crops, that same tobacco-mosaic virus will kill pepper plants, both hot and sweet cultivars. Which are great sources not only of Vitamin C, but also of the pungency [†] that can mitigate the potential boredom of prepper bulk foods.——-
Note *: <https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/03/15/more-vit-d-immunity-antiviral/#comment-126808>.
Note †: Many writers, including people promoting themselves as “foodie bloggers”, fail to understand that “pungency” is sharp spiciness, as in Tabasco sauce, not the more-or-less stinky funkiness that many writers & bloggers mistakenly assume it means. From Latin “pungo, pungĕre, pŭpŭgi, punctum”: “to puncture” or “to stab”. Whoa! “Stab”!? Ummm, Bhut Jolokia (a.k.a. Ghost pepper), Carolina Reaper, or Trinidad Scorpion, anyone?
Ooops! only the hot pepper cultivars provide pungency. I assume that even the “sweet” cultivars provide virtuous quantities of Vitamin C.
Leave it to James Delingpole to get to the MEAT. It leaves no doubt that the CDC has been actively working against President Trump and the American people.
So tell me again why all those people had to suffer in hospital and quarintine and why those people in nursing homes WERE ALLOWED TO DIE???
Delingpole: Chloroquine Known as Effective Against Coronavirus Since 2005
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And if that doesn’t convince you:
— CDC sent out DEFECTIVE KITS to all but THREE STATES!
— CDC rules were overly restrictive and CDC refused to even do a small sentinel sample of general public screening on people that do not meet their presumptive risk category.
— CDC has run just 426 tests from Jan 21 to Feb 24
— BUT 746 people in Washington state were under supervision for coronavirus and now released as ‘cleared’ Using defective test kits?
And how about how Nancy Pelosi bought time by withholding the articles of impeachment from the Senate in December 2019? AND then wandered through the China Town in San Francisco?
February 24, 2020 at 1:33 pm
Pelosi Tours San Francisco’s Chinatown To Quell Coronavirus Fears
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/02/24/coronavirus-speaker-house-nancy-pelosi-tours-san-franciscos-chinatown/
Did Pelosi KNOW there was a cure or maybe she had the VACCINE from China!
CHINA and a SARS-CoV Vaccine.
ADE = Antibody-Dependent Enhancement.
WIKI: “Antibody-dependent enhancement occurs when non-neutralizing antiviral proteins facilitate virus entry into host cells, leading to increased infectivity in the cells.”
This paper explains the problem:
The Complexity of Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of Dengue Virus Infection
*https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3185591/
Or in layman’s terms:
*http://www.denguevirusnet.com/antibody-dependent-enhancement.html
“After a person is infected with dengue, they develop an immune response to that dengue subtype. The immune response produced specific antibodies to that subtype specific surface proteins that prevents the virus from binding to macrophage cells (the target cell that dengue viruses infect) and gaining entry. However, if another subtype of dengue virus infects the individual, the virus will activate the immune system to attack it as if it was the first subtype. The immune system is tricked because the four subtypes have very similar surface antigens. The antibodies bind to the surface proteins but do not inactivate the virus. The immune response attracts numerous macrophages, which the virus proceeds to infect because it has not been inactivated. This situation is referred to as Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) of a viral infection. This makes the viral infection much more acute. The body releases cytokines that cause the endothelial tissue to become permeable which results in Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF) and fluid loss from the blood vessels….”
….
This paper from 2014 showed SARS-CoV had the similar characteristic as Dengue Virus making a normal vaccine worse than useless.
May 6 2014
Antibody-dependent infection of human macrophages by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus.
AUTHORS: Yip MS, Leung NH, Cheung CY, Li PH, Lee HH, Daëron M, Peiris JS, Bruzzone R1, Jaume M.
By March 14, 2018 they had a good grasp on a solution. (If the paper was published in 2018 it was probably started at least a year earlier)
Evaluation of Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of SARS-CoV Infection in Rhesus Macaques Immunized with an Inactivated SARS-CoV Vaccine
>>>>>
And guess what?
China claims the first coronavirus vaccines could be in ‘clinical use’ next month
• Officials expected some vaccines to be in ‘clinical or emergency use’ from April
Was it available a LOT earlier?