Is Vitamin D a magic Covid bullet?

 

Is Vitamin D a magic Covid bullet?

I constantly hear and or read, “follow the science.”  This is good advice, except with regard to Covid-19 the science keeps changing.  There is a lot of “thinks” and “expects” but very little “definitive.”

Wear a mask, wash your hands and keep six feet from people is the current advise.  Now it is pretty simple and not all that annoying to wear a mask, wash your hands and keep your distance, so this is advise that I choose to follow.

I will follow this advice, but I am not all that sure it is as protective as advertised.  The recent rise in Covid cases has been blamed on those hard headed, backward thinking cretins that refuse to wear a mask.  While I am sure there are a few idiots that might be contributing to a rise in Covid cases, this can’t be the main issue.

In New Jersey, EVERYONE wears a mask.  I have not left the house in the last six months and seen anyone indoors or around people not wearing a mask.  NOT ONE!  Still, cases in New Jersey have recently risen dramatically.

So, while we must follow the scientists, which ones do we follow? 

What do we know about Covid?

It tends to effect old people, African Americans and obese people the most.  It peeked in this country in the spring and dipped considerably in the summer.  Is their any commonality in these facts.  This article is interesting. 

https://www.fox26houston.com/news/studies-suggest-4-vitamins-to-prevent-severe-cases-of-covid-19

I found this article on Fox, so many of you will stop reading now, but I still find it interesting.

 

The study which is buried in most media, suggests vitamin C, D and zinc can help protect from Covid and is an effective treatment to reduce Covid symptoms.  It especially finds vitamin D to be effective.

What is interesting to me is that vitamin D deficiency is very common.

Vitamin D is produced by the body when skin is exposed to sunlight.

Some groups, it turns out are especially deficient in vitamin D…old people, obese people, and dark skin people.  It fits a pattern.

Covid in this country was introduced around late January 2020 and exploded through the spring.  Cases started to decline as daylight increased in the summer and cases started to explode again after the summer when days became shorter.  It fits a pattern.

Perhaps having people stay in their dark basements and wait out the virus was a bad idea.  Closing the beaches may not have been a great idea.

Protesting in large groups outdoors in the sun did not seem to cause the virus to spread…Hmmm, outdoors good, inside bad.

Vitamin D, C and zinc is inexpensive; far cheaper than ventilators.  It takes huge quantities of D, C and zinc to cause any ill effects.  In short, much like washing your hands and wearing a mask, it couldn’t hurt!

I will continue to wash my hands, wear a mask, avoid strangers in enclosed poorly ventilated spaces, and I am now taking supplements of vitamin D, C, and zinc. 

When they say I can get a vaccine, I will not waste any time getting it.

Stay safe everyone.

 

 

  

FRUITCAKE

                                                                                 FRUITCAKE

Rerun from 2011 

Bullying is on everyone’s minds these days.  I read newspaper articles about bullying on a daily basis.  One victim of bullying has not been talked about.  A victim I loved.  An American Holiday tradition is gone as a result of relentless bullying. 

The Christmas Fruitcake is no more.

I loved the Christmas fruitcake.  This was a tradition, baked yearly in-mass by elderly grandmas, aunts, cousins or neighbors.  Women who could not afford gifts to their many acquaintances could pull out a generations handed down recipe and bake bricks of fruity rum infused deserts to be given as presents.

It is true that sometimes you received multiple fruitcakes over the Holidays.  It is also true that the fruitcake had a long, almost forever, shelf life.  The result was some fruitcakes went un-eaten, some were re-gifted. 

There are legends (myths) of the same fruitcake being re-gifted over multiple Christmas Holidays.  It became a joke that the re-gifting of the fruitcake was a Holiday tradition.  Not true, oh it happened, but the re-gifted treat generally ended up with a fruitcake lover.

Legends such as these are fodder for late night comedians and it became a Holiday tradition for these low life bullies to make the traditional Christmas fruitcake joke.  The Tonight Show’s Johnny Carson was particularly brutal in his treatment of fruitcake.   

I loved fruitcake.  My family loved fruitcake, and yet we sat quietly, even laughed uncomfortably when these fruitcake jokes were told.

I should have spoken up.  I should have stood and yelled “Stop! I love fruitcake, and there are many others just like me!”  I did not.  Bullied by the jokes and the head nodding giggling responses of the masses to these jokes, I remained silent.  I allowed the fruitcake to be bullied.

The last ten years there have been no Holiday fruitcakes in my home.  This year there will also be none.  The grandmas, aunts, cousins and neighbors that used to bake and hand them out have all passed-on.  Their recipes have been filed away and forgotten.  Their protégés will not bake and hand them out.  They have been shamed and mocked by the fruitcake bullies; they will be shamed and mocked no more.

 

Few people will ever again know the joy of receiving and enjoying this Holiday desert treat.  History will tell of the much maligned once traditional Holiday fruitcake which disappeared from the American landscape due to scorn and indifference.

The truth is that a treat baked with love and enjoyed by millions is gone.  Gone as the result of relentless jokes and bullying which was silently allowed by a gutless audience of people such as me.  We quietly allowed a Holiday tradition to be maligned.  We sat back and allowed the fruitcake to be bullied until the fruitcake is no more!

When will we learn?  

MAPS

 

MAPS

On a recent post involving my issues with Siri and directions, one person commented how she still uses a map.

This had me thinking nostalgically. 

Many young people today will never experience the trials and tribulations of road maps. 

Every service station used to sell road maps.  Local maps and maps for all the states.  They fit neatly into your car’s glove compartment.  I never understood why it was a glove compartment, it always just held maps.  Should have been called a map compartment.

Anyway.

Those maps were great; if you could read them.  I could never read them worth a damn.  Read them, Hell, I couldn’t even fold them.  My maps were jammed into the glove compartment folded all inside-out and backwards. 

Skilled people could follow the roads from fold to fold, and they knew their north from south along with distances based on the map scale.  I was helpless with a map. 

I probably inherited my ability from my Mom.

My Dad’s job had him relocated twice in the fifties from New York, to California and then back.  We made both trips by car, a 1951 Buick. 

We found our way following multiple state maps crammed into our glove compartment.  Mom was the chief map reader while Dad did most of the driving.  We often took back roads to visit various parks and must-see landmarks along the way.

Mom was not great at map reading.  The result was never pretty.

“Peg, does I 76 run into Bolderdash Drive.”

“I think so.”

“What think so? It either does or it doesn’t.”

“Well, Bolderdash Drive is kind of skinny and I 76 is this big thick thingy and it may go over Bolderdash because it looks like there is a bridge or something.”

“A bridge? Does it say ‘bridge’?”

“No but it is hard to tell, as it gets close, the fold in the map makes it confusing.”

This went on for several miles before Pop would finally pull to the side of the road and snatch the map away from Mom. 

There may have been cursing.

Why he never just pulled off the road every time in the first place I’ll never know.

Tradition, I guess.

Pop could read a map upside-down and backwards.  He could then flip the thing in the air and after a rhythmic “flap, flap, flap, hand it neatly folded back to Mom.

 

Years ago, before GPS was common, I used to participate on flyfish trips with friends Frog and Catfish out in Western Maryland. 

Frog always carried a huge book of maps of the area.  It was very detailed and a trip would require flipping the pages several times.  Frog and Catfish had been fishing in this part of Western Maryland several times and they knew the area like the back of their hands.  Still, they had to rely on the book and figure out the best route.

They passed the book back and forth all during the trip and argued.

“I’m pretty sure we can take a left at Possum Bluff and save a few miles to the cabin.”

“Yes, but that road is a bit rough after a rain.”

“It hasn’t rained in days.”

“Maybe not at home, but from the looks of the leaves on the persimmons trees it rained here recently.”

(Needless to say, Catfish was an expert at reading nature.)

“Oh yeah, plus that road does not pass the fly shop by Snot Grass Pass.”

“So, we should take the Old Dickweed Road?”

“That’s what I think.  What do you think Hagy?”

“What? I’m still trying to figure out what a persimmons tree is and how the hell you can judge rainfall by the leaves!”

Sometimes I think Frog and Catfish loved discussing maps more than they loved fishing.

 

Anyway, that is all I have on maps.  Young people are lucky to be born in a GPS world.

I can’t read a map, but I’m pretty good at listening to and following Siri’s directions. I hardly ever have to pull over and yell at Siri. 

Plus, there is now room for gloves in my glove compartment.