Wuhan virus 2020

[ET2SN]

OK, just a couple of things off the top of my head about Vit D.

Due to my disability, my Vit D levels were tested many years ago (this requires a specific blood test) and were found to be extremely low. My doctor asked if I wanted to be part of a study about taking high levels of Vit D supplements.

I said OK and took extremely high doses of Vit D3 pills (these were Rx pills, not over-the-counter) for a couple of months.

Did I notice any difference? No, not really, but my tested Vit D levels were "normal" again.

So, does Vit D make a difference? I guess it depends on your situation. If you live an active lifestyle, spend time outdoors, and eat a healthy diet, it shouldn't make a difference.

The main point I want to get across- Don't base your health care on what the News says. If you think your Vit D levels are low, get tested by your Doctor. Work with your Dr. on diet, exercise, and life style if its needed.

On a separate issue in the US, keep in mind that "supplements" (Vitamins, OTC meds, herbal cures, etc.) are held to same standards of purity as fast food.

Your vitamins and diet pills have to be as pure as a Big Mac. Try to always keep this in mind.

Lastly, a couple of points that rarely get mentioned:

If you want to invest in suppliants as a part of your daily diet, YOU NEED TO START WITH SOME KIND OF A BASELINE. Get your blood tested by a Dr.

Taking 12 "Vit X" pills a day is meaningless if you don't have a plan. "They're just good for me" can get you in trouble.

Likewise, "if a little is good, a lot must be better" can also get you in a lot of trouble. Do your homework, talk to your Dr. about safe levels based on your body type and fitness level.

If you're taking five different vitamins per day and they all look alike, there's a good reason for that. Gel caps that contain only fish oil or vegetable oil can be sold as multiple vitamin types. Learn how to read the labels so you know what you're taking.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

This is the only place I can vent and not become an outcast ... sad, but true

You must try harder!

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

Health Secretary Matt Hancock says the Test and Trace system is "critical" to control the virus.

More than 31,000 close contacts identified during the first week of the test and trace system in England.

US cases pass the two million mark, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Number of confirmed cases in Russia passes 500,000 - third highest in the world, behind the US and Brazil.

Shutting down US economy for a second time is not a viable option, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says.

There have been more than 7.3 million infections globally and more than 416,000 deaths.

[Jimbuna]

The Isle of Man has become the first place in the British Isles to drop social distancing.

Lockdown measures are being relaxed in parts of Brazil, and stores and shopping centres are reopening in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been criticised for his handling of the outbreak, has created a new government department - the Ministry of Communications. It follows a Supreme Court ruling forcing the government to publish official coronavirus figures on the health ministry's website. The country has recorded almost 40,000 deaths and more than 750,000 confirmed infections.

Mexico's death toll has surpassed 15,000 deaths and a government official has warned that case predictions for the country have been revised upwards. The capital, Mexico City, plans to increase testing to a target of 100,000 tests a month in an effort to start reopening the economy.

Peru's exports of ginger root have increased almost threefold during the pandemic. Ginger is seen as an immune-system booster but there is no evidence to suggest it protects against coronavirus.

[mapuc]

Interesting information.

Scientists from the CDC and the US Navy gathered 382 young adults from the aircraft carrier and found 60 percent had reactive antibodies, and 59 percent of those also had neutralizing antibodies. In a small number of cases, the antibodies were tested and detected over three months after symptom onset, indicating that immunity could last for several months in some instances.

https://www.iflscience.com/health-an...ajcFqz7KgtGIxQ

Markus

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by ET2SN

OK, just a couple of things off the top of my head about Vit D.

Due to my disability, my Vit D levels were tested many years ago (this requires a specific blood test) and were found to be extremely low. My doctor asked if I wanted to be part of a study about taking high levels of Vit D supplements.

I said OK and took extremely high doses of Vit D3 pills (these were Rx pills, not over-the-counter) for a couple of months.

Did I notice any difference? No, not really, but my tested Vit D levels were "normal" again.

So, does Vit D make a difference? I guess it depends on your situation. If you live an active lifestyle, spend time outdoors, and eat a healthy diet, it shouldn't make a difference.

The main point I want to get across- Don't base your health care on what the News says. If you think your Vit D levels are low, get tested by your Doctor. Work with your Dr. on diet, exercise, and life style if its needed.

On a separate issue in the US, keep in mind that "supplements" (Vitamins, OTC meds, herbal cures, etc.) are held to same standards of purity as fast food.

Your vitamins and diet pills have to be as pure as a Big Mac. Try to always keep this in mind.

Lastly, a couple of points that rarely get mentioned:

If you want to invest in suppliants as a part of your daily diet, YOU NEED TO START WITH SOME KIND OF A BASELINE. Get your blood tested by a Dr.

Taking 12 "Vit X" pills a day is meaningless if you don't have a plan. "They're just good for me" can get you in trouble.

Likewise, "if a little is good, a lot must be better" can also get you in a lot of trouble. Do your homework, talk to your Dr. about safe levels based on your body type and fitness level.

If you're taking five different vitamins per day and they all look alike, there's a good reason for that. Gel caps that contain only fish oil or vegetable oil can be sold as multiple vitamin types. Learn how to read the labels so you know what you're taking.

I could not much disagree with any in that, and some of the cautioning you made I have given myself earlier, and repeatedly. However I also remind you of that there is no general consenus internationally on recommendable doses of Vitamine-D, and therefore house doctors vary in views widely and across countries, so do natioanl sevrices, auhtorites and offices. Some nations' official recommendaitons say 800 IE per day, others say 2000, and some say not more than 5000 per day. Thats w very wide spread already.

The talk is of an almost vitamine-D deficiency pandemia, thats why the Nordic countries supplement it a lot, for example, add it to their food from the supermarket shelves, prescriobe it as pills. I explained all that repeatedly before, and so did the videos by Campbell, he only reports what is in the medical journals, he has no own commercial interest there. We know that singoifivasnt,. huge parts of populations are deficient in Wetsenr coutn ries, but also in many "sun-rich" countries - because where it is hot, people avoid exposing themsleves to the sun, or they work in the factory all day long, or .... the reasons are endless. The correlations between deficient Vitamine D levels and severity of Covid 19 infections speak a very clear language, it all is very obvious.As Campbell said, Vitmaine D may just be a marker, or it may be a causla link indeed, I agree with what he said there: the first is possible but unlikely, the second is very likely. For the time being I follow Occam's razor rule, I simply stick to the simplier explanation here. And it makes sense. An awful lot of. Also, it is a link (skin colour, sun expose and Vitamine D production) that is known since long.

I said from very early on: you cannot expect that supplements like this prevent infections or "cure" Covid 19. They most likely don't. But it seems very convincing that they ease the going of the disease if you get it. The maximum possible performance of your immune system varies, it is weak as a child, it is maximum in young adult years, and comes age so comes a weakening of its maximum possible performance. You cannot boost it beyond these levels that vary with age. But when the immune system is undersupplied with nutritions that it needs to function properly, then it cannot even reach this age-typical optimum. Its as if you have a castle with high walls, and cannons mounted on them, and the older the castle gets, the more cannos fall down. The castle defences grow weaker. You cannot chnage that - but you can make sure that every remaining gun at least is sufficiently suplied with ammunition. That is what it is about.

I am extremely sceptical whenever I read a report or feedback by somebody who says "I take Vitamine X, Y, Z and since I do that I feel that it made my wellbeign so much better." That is nonsene, self-delusion, almost always. When you were so deficient that you got ill and formed symptoms due to that deficiency, improving on that deficiency may help to get rid of the symptoms , and when you have them no more, then you feel relief and better indeed, okay. But if you are in a stable health status and consume these vitamines, I hardly can imagine that you feel an improvement from that. Their effect is much more subtle, in significant parts it still is even clearly understood. Note that the good doctor says it himself: there are no clinical trials with double-blind designs beign done on Vitamine-D and Covid-19 - but there is a stunnimg ammount of ever confirmed strong correlations nevertehless. And if correlations like this get confirmed this intensely and so often and so high and signficantly, then it is simply not clever to just ignore them.

Legal aspects of not being held accountable and needing to pay high financial compensations always also play a role in these official recommendation for doses, in German it is refered to in brief as the insurrance risk. Thats why it is a safe bet that these official recommendations have plenty of security tolerance to upper critical levels in them. Else the ministry of health risks to get sued off the planet's face.


Then there is the lobby of the pharma industry. It cannot have an interest in a healthy population, because people who think they are not ill will not buy expensive drugs. The lobbying against food supplements is intense, therefore, much more money-heavy than the lobbying for supplements. Producers of supplements tend to spend their money more on advertising, therefore. The battle is fought with gloves off. Diseases ven get fabricated and critical treshold values of this and that physiological organic variable even get redefined in a way that more patients get defined ill this way and thus: more people buy more blood presssure drugs. More hormone pills. More stetines. Doctors lay under intense artillery by the industry to have them prescribing this or that new drug, that fails to prove better effect, but costs twice as much as the old one. - Whenever you go to the doctor, listen to what he says, and consider it. But never stop thinking yourself, and never give up your scepticism in the waiting room. Mostly I follow doctor's advice. But not always. And when what he explains to me does not make sense to me or I cannot understand it or I think he simplifies something that is important, I change the doctor for another one. Did it before, would do it again.

All these official natiuonal authorities and recommendations tend to be excessively cautious and careful and conservative , also because new knowledge only slowly enters the mainstream thinking of science. Not every doctor know just about evertyhing, it is impossible to learn that much every week anyway.

Campbell mentioned the example of India: that it is a cultural thing that in that coutnry people avoid walking in the sun, if they can. Nice quote of that old English song mocking the British for doing it nevertheless. In Scandinavia they add to food and prescribe Vitamine-D. Both shows that just saying "l excercise, eat well, have my optimal food intake" does not automatically work. Of course i do not say "DonT do anythign of that, eat pills". Usually I do not consume any supplements! But where it makes sense or need is, I say: use supplements additionally. To me the point is this virus and the fact that we have still no working defence, no treatment, no therapy against it. We cana onyl socially distance, wear masks - and bring our immune systems into best possible shape. That's why I do what I do.

The metabolic end result of Vitamine D in the blood is one or two substances and their level can be measured. There seems to be an international consensus, whatever that consenus is worth, that 30 nmols/litre needs immediate medical intervention and is dangerous, whereas levels between 30 and 60 nmols/litre are seen as "deficient" and thus critical, intervention is still recommended. That means that anything above is seen as "sufficient". But fact is that you can find a lot of reports and notes on that in case of an infection the immune system seems to benefit from higher levels than just 60 nmol/litre. A doctor telling you to stop taking supplements if you are at 60-70 nmols/litre maybe does not really do you a favour, for he holds you back and stops you from helping your immune system as much as would be possible to gain its best efficiency (which is a desirable status if you get infected). However, there is an upper limit beyond which no further benefits can be gained, and then beyond that level any higher dose can even become contraproductive. That is the region where Calcium more and more plays in - to your disadvantage, it is becoming more and more difficult to prevent that Calcium accumulates in your blood (not good at all...) and your bones become deficient with calcium (also not good...) This all is what you should avoid. Too little Vitamine D is bad, and too much is bad as well. The best use is a range in the middle. I am not certain, but I seem to recall that the best range where you risk no health problems but have your immune defences supported best possible, is around 90 nmols/litre, with additional positive benefits becoming more and more questionable with levels higher than 100-120 nmols/litre, you start to waste money there, but don't take my word for that, I am not certain. However I am certain that the upper safe limit is WAY higher than just those 60nmols.

Do you know where the original classic recommendation for Vitamine C doses is coming from? Its that dose that was found to reliably prevent scurvy amongst ship crews. Now, scurvy is a disease that forms out when you are dangerously deficient with Vitamine C. Just that minimum dose needed to prevent the forming of this disease as the symptom of that deficiency - that shall be the official recommendation for how much Vit C you shoudl have per day? The bare, desperate minimum? That is as if somebody tells you "Don'T eat much, eat only so much that you do not fall off your legs when trying to walk." You still are hungry. You still are dizzy, and may get other symptoms and you may feel the weakness and depression still. Its maybe a good idea to eat a bit more then than just the minimum needed to prevent you from falling off your feet while you still are shaky on your legs and cannot run or carry loads.

This is how science works very often: to stick very long time with the minimum of knowledge, because the new assumptions and indices are not yet proven in the lab. We have seen delay from this model of academic work a lot in the Corona crisis. How long did they tell us (here in Germany at least) to not wear masks, and doing so even would be dangerous? How long have they said air tranmission plays no role? How long have they said aerosols can be ignored? To me it was so obviously wrong that I considered these things at the very start already, late February or so, and now they slowly have followed with saying that their labs have in deed proven now this and that. There is an inbuild delay in the science process , and in case of nutrition and medical treatments, these delays can last years, even decades. Not to mention the generylly extremely poor methodological quality of ecotrophological "studies", I have a girl friend who is ecotrophologist and she is so frustrated of this bad science that she has quit her very successful career at the age of 52. "Schlechte Wissenschaft", she calls it. And that is what the food advisors and doctors and media writers base their output on that you can read in the newspapers every single day!


Shift the probabilities in your favour, it may make the difference for you between a severe and a mild form of Corona infection in case you get hit by it in the future. The chance that you become one of the hospitalised cases when you get bitten by the virus, is roughly like the chance to get a 6 when throwing a die. Its a good idea, I think at least, to try to change that in your favour. Even more so when considering that in no way all people surviving the hospital do fully recover. It seems that manyremain severly handicapped and suffering for months after their release, and certainly also some for the rest of their lives.

Vitamine D deficient people suffer more often and more severly, that is the message we get from alla cross the world. That simple it is, not more, not less it is about.

As always my suggestion to take higher doses of Vitamine D only in combination with Vitamine K2 and Magnesium. The first helps tremendously to keep the Calcium in check, and the second is needed to activate the Vitamine D and enable the metabolism to actually process it. I explained that earlier, and repeatedly.

[Skybird]

I put this hear, since the problem is directly influenced by the pandemic for whcih it served as a catalysator. It would have gone in the same direction without Corona, but slower.

Originally Posted by https://finanzmarktwelt.de/warum-die-kreditblasen-bereits-platzen-ohne-dass-wir-es-merken-162598/

Why the credit bubbles are already bursting without us noticing


I am often asked what is so bad about a recession. Who cares if the economy shrinks by 2%, 5% or even 8%? The answer is always the same: it bothers because every single monetary unit on earth was born as a loan, the loans have to be serviced further and the loan amounts continue to grow thanks to interest. However, a shrinking economy cannot serve growing loans, so that even with only a 2% shrinking, debtors are already going bankrupt. This time, the various bursting credit bubbles could make the financial crisis of 2008 appear as a gentle breeze.

I have often written in recent weeks about loans, credit bubbles and the fact that in many economies the amount of credit grew much faster than the economy as a whole. For example, the US inflated its national debt, which is 100% of its economic output, by 4.6% in order to maintain 2.3% economic growth. Overall, the total amount of loans in the United States rose by 15.8% last year with only 2.3% growth. The United Arab Emirates also built on credit. Consumers have taken out eight times more credit since 2008, but still spent a third less on consumption in 2019 than in 2008.

Even before the corona virus, China's banks were sitting on breathtaking $ 1,400 billion in loans that were considered non-performing. These are loans in which the debtor either no longer pays anything or at least in which individual loan terms such as the collateral provided is no longer met. In the past year, virtually every company that asked for it received credit. At the same time, the government reduced the mandatory risk buffers that banks have to hold for each loan. China now has $ 28 trillion in loans.
The corona virus wipes out the ability to service loans

How will all these loans be served in the biggest global economic crisis in 90 years? My prediction: as little as never before. Many borrowers will already be short of funds in the first month to pay the next loan installment. Even in Germany, this is likely to hit a number of property owners. I myself have calculated the loans for my real estate so that the current rents serve the monthly loan installments. Even with my calculated, 20% vacancy rate buffer, which was immensely large before the crisis, I would no longer be able to do so, since the unreserved termination of rental payments is now legally permitted. If at the same time other sources of income from which one could repay the loans disappear, it looks black for many property owners.

In Germany at least almost all people still get money, be it from the employer or from the employment office. This is not the case in other countries. Social security is only marginally developed and people quickly slide into homelessness during the crisis.
The statistics lagged behind reality by half a year

During the financial crisis, the proportion of non-performing loans in the United States rose from 0.7% to 5.6%. In the fourth quarter the rate was 0.85%. Since a loan is considered non-performing in the United States if payments have not been flowing for 90 days, we will probably not see a significant increase until sometime in November when the third quarter figures are released, in which all of them are no longer serviced Loans appear, the repayment of which is suspended in early April.
Credit bubbles - the central bank has already had to save the property loan market

The reaction of the capital market to the crisis can already be seen today. While the central bank in the United States cut interest rates, they have skyrocketed over the past few weeks on new real estate loans. On March 3, 3.23% interest was paid on a 30-year fixed-rate loan in the USA. It was 4% on March 13, although the central bank cut its key interest rate by 0.5 percentage points on March 3. The reason: The market for structured, asset-backed securities (MBS), with which banks like to sell real estate loans on the capital market, dried up within a few days. Nobody wanted to buy the papers anymore and the prices crashed just as quickly as stocks.

The Federal Reserve announced on March 15 that it would put $ 250 billion in these papers. Rates and interest rates normalized for two days, but then shot up to 4.15% on March 19, even though the central bank cut the key rate by another percentage point on March 15. The key interest rate therefore fell by 1.5 percentage points since March 3, while lending rates rose by 0.92 percentage points. The difference to the interest rate for 30-year US government bonds increased by three quarters.

The situation only calmed down again when the US Federal Reserve announced that it would buy these securities in unlimited amounts in the future. But despite the central bank's rate cut, property buyers still have to pay 3.37%, or more, than at the beginning of March. Now the banks can finance everyone and everything and elegantly discharge the risk at the central bank. The market interest rate no longer reflects risk. We only have a short period of a few days to read how the capital market assesses the probability of default on loans: very high. However, as long as interest rates are artificially manipulated, we no longer see this. We will only see the most likely catastrophic statistical data on credit defaults and bankruptcies sometime in the second half of the year.

Incidentally, the crisis has only just started, and yet four exchange-traded US real estate funds have already been wiped out. Their business model was to buy said asset-backed securities and finance them with short-term loans. Given the dramatic fall in MBS prices, the funds should provide additional collateral that they did not have. The result: the MBS serving as security, i.e. the assets of the funds, become the property of the lender, which means a total loss for the fund investors.

Nervous? Very well. We all have reason to be. This will get much worse than 12 years ago. Did anyone look at the stocks indices today?

[Reece]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I put this hear

I put this here

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Reece

I put this here

That's only four words Reece!

Oh never mind wrong thread

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Reece

I put this here

Pedant!





I leave it unedited, so to not spoil your point.

[Skybird]

According to the French central bank, paying with banknotes does not increase the risk of a coronavirus infection. "Scientific analysis by recognized European laboratories have confirmed in recent weeks that banknotes do not pose a higher risk of infection in everyday life than from other surfaces," said the Banque de France on Thursday.

Studies have shown that the virus survives ten to one hundred times longer on stainless steel - for example door handles - than on a bank note, the central bank said. Further analysis would have shown that the virus spreads more heavily on porous surfaces than on smooth surfaces such as plastic.

The use of banknotes does not pose any particular risk of infection in everyday life, as long as the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) are also followed.

(FOCUS Germany Newsticker)

[Skybird]

Corona was the worst that could hit the UK, and at the worst possible time. Unforseeable for any Brexiteer, but now a reality.


Economy has gone into a steeper dive than anywhere else in the industrilaised world, in April it shrank by a record 20+ %.


A study searched for patient 0 in the UK - and found 1300. Only 0.1% of them were coming form China.


A speedy recovery is unlikely, that the eocnomic consequences are just slowly unfolding is somethign that the media crowd still has not flly understood, and only seldomly I read it in the commentign by somebody. I think, in the UK and elsewhere, the worst is still to come, but will unfold over a longer time period, appearing that way as something slightly better.



In Germany, at least 20-25% of gastronoym is expected to disappear. At least 20% of those in short time work - the german wonder wepaon against what other economies so far went thorugh - will end up in long-.time unemployment. Lufthansa cuts 26,000 jobs, and still will not be safe with that, having had to trade important landing slots for the EU's allowance for billions of credits given by the state. Berlin'S new airport is on red alert ocne again: a yearly dificit in maintenance costs of over 1.5 billion has opened up "suddenly", but the calculations on its ficnail perofmance were glossy and nice-calculated already before,w ith its capacity not meeting demands already at plannign stage. Now, it is uncertain if and when the capacity even will be filled, with air traffic being at rock bottom. Bitter fighting has broken out betwene virologists and hygiencics expert. The altter accuse the first of having tlaked too much drivel about not needing to mask and such, that way pacing the way for needing to lock down and dojgn all that damage. I comoare to Asien countries, and see that the early mask wearing helped them to stay eocnomically open to significantly higher degrees than we in the West, so I tend to follow that argment (of course I do...).



The Donaldinarium announces that even with a second wave coming they would not lock down again.



Dispute also flares up on whether the vorus has mutaed into a less aggressive form, of that just beign a mesled impression due to the social distncing and masking beign effective and thus reducing the number of cases appearing in hopsital. The debate rages on.


Turkey is angry that Germany does not give it a special role and eases travel warnings for it. Germany eased these warnings only for ****ries of the EU so far.



A global study showed that school closures were one if not the most effective way to limit the spreading of the pandemic. Whereas in Germany they cannot be fast enough now to pen them again - too early. We have several new clusters already. In two states there are exmaples of two shcols were the auhtorities try to hide the brekaign out of the pandemci ins chools and simjply refuse to test teachers and pupils. If it is too long, it gets cut short, if it is too short, it gets stretched. Well, the bill will be presented soon.

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

UK GDP fell by 20.4% in April, the largest fall since monthly records began in 1997

British Airways, Ryanair and Easyjet say they have filed a formal legal challenge to the UK government’s quarantine policy.

The UN warns the virus crisis has left millions of children at risk of being forced into child labour.

Attendees at Donald Trump's election rally in Tulsa next week are asked to sign a waiver over the coronavirus.

They are asked to promise they will not sue the president or organisers if they catch the virus by attending.

Latin America has now recorded more than 1.5 million virus cases and 70,000 deaths.

In India patients are being turned away from hospitals but officials warn the virus has not yet peaked.

There have been 7.5 million cases worldwide and more than 420,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.