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Hi Peter,

You wrote: ". . . the limitations of government, and the impotence of government diktat to command any infectious pathogen, let alone a respiratory pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2 capable of spreading via a variety of vectors".

On the contrary, any government could stop COVID-19, influenza and many common cold viruses by ensuring their people supplement sufficient vitamin D3. For 70 kg bodyweight, this means about 0.125 mg (5000 IU). This would marginally reduce the incidence of infection for any given viral insult, but would protect almost everyone from severe symptoms and would greatly reduce the average intensity of disease and so the average levels of viral shedding, most likely to levels which would reduce R0 to below 1.0, so ending pandemic transmission.

What most doctors and all governments do not realise is that without proper vitamin D supplementation (0.125 mg is a gram every 22 years, and it costs USD$2.50 a gram ex-factory), most people's circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D level is 1/2 to 1/10th of the 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L their immune system needs to function properly.

See the Quraishi et al. graph and other research articles cited at: "What every MD, immunologist, virologist and epidemiologist should know about vitamin D and the immune system" https://vitamindstopscovid.info/05-mds/ .

The most important early treatment for all those who have low 25-hydroxyvitamin D is a single oral dose of (very approximately) 0.014 mg calcifediol per kg bodyweight, which is 1 mg for average weight adults. Calcifediol _is_ 25-hydroxyvitamin D. It goes straight into circulation, raising the blood 25-hydroxyvitamin D level safely over 50 ng/mL in 4 hours. Bolus vitamin D3 (such as 10 mg 400,000 IU) takes, very approximately, 4 days to achieve this. 0.125mg vitamin D3 a day takes several months, on average. https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/calcifediol-to-boost-25-hydroxyvitamin

This proper vitamin D3 supplementation would prevent almost all sepsis (which kills about 10 million people a year worldwide) and reduce the incidence of and/or severity of numerous cancers and other chronic and acute diseases. If even a fraction of the diseases mentioned at https://vitamindwiki.com would be less of a problem with proper vitamin D3 supplementation, then the modest effort in attaining this, voluntarily, through government supported education and funding for the supplements themselves is well worth it. The supplements should be made by private industry, not the government - though the government should support quality testing of all such products.

There's very little vitamin D3 in food or multivitamins. It can be generated in the skin via UV-B exposure, but this always damages DNA and so raises the risk of skin cancer. Such UV-B is only available to most people in the middle of the day, in summer, without any clouds or intervening glass, clothing or sunscreen. UV-B is clearly not the way to get all the vitamin D3 we need - especially for those with dark skin and/or sun-avoidant clothing and lifestyles. It is impossible to fortify food with vitamin D3 in a way which ensures most people get enough. Supplementation - such as every day, week or probably up to 10 days - is the only practical way of attaining proper 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels.

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