Scientists trace heat waves back to individual fossil fuel companies, with potentially sweeping courtroom implications

[-rick-]

AFAIK FFP3 masks protect the wearer and prevents spread. The other masks provide little protection for the wearer and stop large particles which at the time some speculated would help limit spread to others. Once the science came out that properly analysed how covid spread (a lot of smaller particles that go through/around masks that don't seal to the face) the advice should have changed to have everyone wear the better masks.

 

Our country was quite an outlier on this. The person making decisions on masks in the NHS was a nurse with no training in infectious diseases, at the COVID enquiry she was insisting that masks weren't effective despite all the evidence presented there and elsewhere. I get the distinct impression there was pressure caused by the lack of supplies that lead to hesistation recommending anything better than cloth/low quality surgical style masks. Personally I think this is one of the bigger mistakes made in this country - prioritising managing the situation rather than being very clear on facts. Too often the government focussed on 'the message' rather than communicating what was known, this may have helped short term with getting people to do what they wanted but it sowed massive distrust that continues to this day.

 

The big caveat to all this masks only work if worn properly and at population scale plenty of people don't like wearing them or make half assed efforts. In those cases masks can provide a false sense of security. Without good ventilation indoor spaces are still a problem even with masks (because masks aren't perfect) and it's again one of those areas where England is an outlier. Many other countries, including Scotland, have tightened ventilation requirements for buildings to ensure more fresh air (something that is a good idea even ignoring covid or other infectious diseases).

[Spinny]

When we talk about science today, unfortunately we are talking about a world which has drastically changed over the past 50 years and become almost unrecognisable. Science is now dominated by business and academic career interests. China floods academic journals with junk papers and now many written by AI engines. For an academic science career today you need to publish many papers and get cited by colleagues, it has become a sick game. Millions of people have PhDs. Professors have their names on many papers but barely read them. Peer review has become corrupted and politicised. Science is as riddled with cronyism as any other discipline. Findings and theories ''authorities'' don't like and which challenge commercial interests are blocked. Journal editors favour papers that suit their commercial interests. Large double blind medical trials are expensive and are almost exclusively only those funded by commercial interests i.e. Big Pharma. It really isn't what you think it is.

 

Science is associated with truth. Hard science and engineering has revolutionised our world. So anyone that can claim their product, drug, treatment, theory, or vested interests is backed by 'science' knows they will make money. Enormous incentives to cheat a little here and there, to bin the negative results and only publish the positive ones.

 

Selling medicines to the well is great business. You can charge ten or a hundred times the production costs for a patented drug. Off patent drugs are your commercial enemy. If everyone realised taking vitamin D hugely reduced your covid risk the market for vaccines and patented drugs for covid would collapse. Big Pharma carefully targets medics and others that control prescribing, they spend vast sums lobbying politicians. Jonathan Van-Tam now works as a senior medical consultant to Moderna. Many find a revolving door between officialdom and big pharma. There is a reason that happens. It is not good.

 

[sgt_woulds]

25 minutes ago, Spinny said:

If everyone realised taking vitamin D hugely reduced your covid risk the market for vaccines and patented drugs for covid would collapse. 

 

 

 

Or just getting a dose of sunshine.  Of the 'mistakes' made in hard lockdown, stopping people from visiting parks or open countryside was misguided for a range of health reasons.  

 

But you are overstating the facts, as have many anti-vaxers.  Vitimin D on its own will not reduce the risks enough to obviate the need for vaccines, but it may improve their effectiveness.  

 

Can vitamin D supplements help protect against covid-19? | New Scientist

 

At any rate, getting out into the sunshine and fresh air will certainly make you feel better and reduce stress.  Lower stress = reduced rates of inflamation.  When inflamation is reduced the body can make better use of its immune system to target infection.

[-rick-]

@Spinny

 

You highlight many real issues there but I think that just reinforces the point I was trying to make, that you can't take any single paper or single scientist saying something as a fact or true. The process of science relys on lots of work repeating, refining, proposing alternative explanations and only when you get to the point where there is broad consensus amongst the scientists in the field can you call something basically settled. This process removes a lot of the noise you highlight but it takes a long time and is not something a layperson (or even a scientist from another field) can really usefully engage with.

 

Even when something is considered settled, say climate change, just because the fundamental principles are settled the precise details are still discussed. From my limited understanding the scientific debates are now along the lines of if the models have been too conservative and the actual effects of climate change will be worse than previously expected.

Edited 7 hours ago by -rick-
Added tag to Spinny so make clear who I was replying to

[SteamyTea]

2 hours ago, sgt_woulds said:

Can vitamin D supplements help protect against covid-19? | New Scientist

Have you read this, in this week's comic?

 

Vitamin D supplements may lower your level of one type of vitamin D

Taking vitamin D2 supplements seems to reduce levels of vitamin D3 in our body

By Chris Simms

18 September 2025

 

Vitamin D supplements are recommended during the darker months in many countries

Olga Pankova/Getty Images

 

Taking one type of vitamin D supplement seems to cut the levels of another type that is more easily used by the body, which could affect our immune system.

Our bodies create vitamin D when ultraviolet rays in sunlight convert a protein called 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin into a type of vitamin D known as vitamin D3. When sunlight is sparse during autumn and winter, countries like the UK recommend people take supplements.

 

Two forms of these supplements are available: vitamin D3, or cholecalciferol – which normally comes from lanolin, a waxy substance on sheep’s wool – and vitamin D2, or ergocalciferol, which mainly comes from mushrooms. It was thought that it didn’t really matter which one you took.

But now, Emily Brown at the University of Surrey, UK, and her colleagues have performed a meta-analysis of 11 previously published randomised-controlled trials on vitamin D supplements, with a total of 655 participants.

They found taking vitamin D2 supplements can lead to a drop in the body’s concentration of vitamin D3. Why this happens, or if vitamin D3 supplements reduce vitamin D2 levels, isn’t entirely clear.

 

Furthermore, in many of the studies, the vitamin D3 levels were lower in people taking vitamin D2 than they were in control groups not taking any vitamin D supplements. “This is a previously unknown effect,” says Brown.

A 2022 study suggests vitamin D2 and D3 have overlapping but different roles in supporting immune function. Only vitamin D3 seems to stimulate the type-I interferon signalling system, for instance, which provides a first line of defence against bacteria and viruses.

Brown says the findings suggest vitamin D3 supplements may be more beneficial for most individuals than vitamin D2, but adds personal considerations need to be taken into account, such as wanting to avoid animal products.

They also don’t mean people should just stop taking vitamin D2, she says. “Your total vitamin D level will still be sufficient if you are taking vitamin D2 supplements, but you might find that it’s less effective and you might lose out on those additional functions in terms of immune support.”

Ouliana Ziouzenkova at The Ohio State University points out studies have shown that among older people, the conversion of vitamin D3 to its active form called calcitriol can be less efficient, so D2 supplementation may be particularly beneficial in this population.

 

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“In the absence of any evidence for negative effects, if someone who is vegan is deficient in vitamin D, opting for a D2 supplement over no supplement remains the likely prudent choice,” says Bernadette Moore at the University of Liverpool in the UK.

Plant-based vitamin D3 has started to become more accessible. For instance, a tomato has been gene-edited to produce vitamin D3, but trials are ongoing.

Team member Susan Lanham-New, also at the University of Surrey, hopes the research will remind people of the importance of vitamin D supplements. “There are many people in the United Kingdom and other areas of northern latitude who in winter get mild osteomalacia [known as rickets in children], caused by lack of vitamin D – which presents itself in lethargy, bone pain, muscle ache, susceptibility to infection, tiredness – and don’t realise,” she says.

 

Journal reference:

Nutrition Reviews DOI: 10.1093/nutrit/nuaf166

[Spinny]

Hmm...