Author: BlackMask Financial

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Trump Taps Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow to Oversee Post-Election Legal Battles

 

In recent months, President Donald Trump has spoken directly to his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about overseeing a legal fight that could arise from a close or contested 2020 election, two people familiar with the situation tell The Daily Beast. In related conversations with Giuliani and other confidants, Trump has also made clear that he wants Jay Sekulow, another personal attorney to Trump who defended the president during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation, playing a major role if the courts got involved in resolving election disputes. “I want Jay and Rudy on this,” Trump said in one private conversation this summer, according to one of the sources. Nick Note: Trump is preparing to lose the election. But with his legal dream team he plans to win the mail in vote fraud legal battle. He looks to lose the election and win the Stacked in his favor Supreme Court fight. This election may well be decided by the lawyers. Remeber Trump by election time will have appointed 4 supreme court justices who Trump owns. Time to collect those markers.

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Trump again attacks Fauci’s guidance as coronavirus infections tick upward

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s long-fraught relationship with Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease specialist, ruptured again this week in an ugly public dispute just as U.S. coronavirus cases have ticked past 50,000 per day and with three weeks left in a presidential campaign dominated by the government’s response to the pandemic. Trump on Tuesday responded to Fauci’s warnings that the president’s decision to resume campaign rallies this week was “very troublesome” by mocking him in a tweet that unfavorably compared his medical guidance to his errant ceremonial first pitch at a Washington Nationals’ game in July. “Actually, Tony’s pitching arm is far more accurate than his prognostications,” Trump wrote, erroneously suggesting that Fauci’s advice in the early days of the pandemic that the public need not wear face masks meant that the doctor was playing down the virus. Nick Note: A house divided against itself cannot stand. Up to now Trump was a master at divide and conquer his enemies. The lesson he failed to learn was to divide YOUR house. His is in big trouble. Fauci is the Dr Marcus Welby, M.D. the fictional TV doctor. People love and trust Fauci. Trump has chosen in his insanity to flame the wrong guy.

The president’s nasty personal attack offered more evidence of the large gulf between the government’s top two public messengers on the pandemic, who have consistently contradicted one another. Trump has repeatedly undercut Fauci’s advice and sought to minimize the threat of a virus that has killed at least 215,000 Americans, while the doctor has tacitly criticized the president for failing to follow basic safeguards such as wearing a mask and social distancing.

Trump has not met individually with Fauci in more than a month, White House aides said, keeping tabs mostly by watching his appearances on cable news shows.

The latest tensions, though, illustrate a conundrum for Trump, who has sought to win public confidence with a relatively quick rebound from his own coronavirus diagnosis that forced him into a three-night stay at Walter Reed National Medical Center this month.

Though he has continued to denigrate Fauci, his campaign offered an acknowledgment of the public’s high regard for the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases by including an out-of-context clip of him in a recent advertisement – a move that angered Fauci.

The ad, which tout the president as “sparing no expense” to protect seniors from the virus, includes a brief video of Fauci saying, “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more” – a comment he made during a Fox News interview in March. The full interview makes clear, however, that Fauci was speaking about the White House’s coronavirus task force, of which he is a member, and not about the president.

Fauci, 79, said in a statement Sunday that he had never endorsed a political candidate in his nearly five decades of public service. In an interview with the Daily Beast on Monday, Fauci demanded the Trump campaign remove the clip. “By doing this against my will they are, in effect, harassing me,” he said.

Fauci, who has said he is not considering resigning, declined to comment for this story.

In an email, Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, did not respond to the accusations that the clip took him out of context. Asked about Fauci’s warning about Trump’s campaign rallies – including one in Sanford, Fla., on Monday that drew thousands of supporters – Murtaugh emphasized that the president’s events are generally “being held in open-air airplane hangars.”

Murtaugh added that the campaign is “screening everyone with temperature checks, providing masks which people are instructed to wear, and providing hand sanitizer. No matter how much the media and Democrats want to keep President Trump off the campaign trail, he’s going to talk to Americans and do it safely.”

Trump was scheduled to continue a daily slate of campaign events with a rally in Johnstown, Pa., on Tuesday evening, before heading to Des Moines, on Wednesday.

“That is asking for trouble when you do that,” Fauci said on CNN on Monday. “We’ve seen that when you have situations of congregate settings where there are a lot of people without masks, the data speak for themselves. It happens. And now is even more so a worse time to do that, because when you look at what’s going on in the United States, it’s really very troublesome.”

On Tuesday, Minnesota health officials tied 15 coronavirus cases to a pair of Trump rallies in the state and three more to an event with Vice President Mike Pence in Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Another four cases were tied to protests around Trump’s visit, along with one case tied to an event held with Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Trump and Fauci have existed in a state of uneasy tension for months with semiregular flare ups as the doctor has sought to offer public guidance through his own schedule of media appearances, despite efforts from the White House to muzzle him.

Trump aides have occasionally blocked him from prominent television interviews, chafing at how frequently he seems to book himself on shows. They have complained privately that Fauci appears on the airwaves far more often than Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator and others involved in the administration’s response.

One senior administration official said the White House moved to book Eric Trump, the president’s son, on the Sunday political talk shows this past weekend, rather than Fauci, to put forward a political, campaign-focused message. The official, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Trump has complained to aides that Fauci labeled a Rose Garden event on Sept. 26 – which has been suspected of being at the center of a coronavirus outbreak that has infected Trump, first lady Melania Trump and at least 33 other White House aides and associates – as a “super spreader event.”

Fauci has regularly battled with Scott Atlas, the president’s coronavirus adviser, who regularly eschews wearing a face mask and is regularly at Trump’s side in the Oval Office.

Atlas has advocated for fully reopening schools and businesses without restrictions, questions well-established science on masks and social distancing and reducing testing – all positions that are in line with Trump’s desire to move past the pandemic and assure people life is returning to normal. Fauci has regularly been at odds with Atlas.

Fauci has been internally critical of the president’s campaign, telling other advisers they are regularly taking dangerous risks with big events, officials said.

The campaign did not tell Fauci in advance that they would be using him in the advertisement, two campaign officials said. But advisers bragged about the spot in advance, saying it could help turn around the president’s poor public approval rating over his handling of the coronavirus.

Recent polls show Biden with a widening lead nationally and a continued edge in several key swing states.

“Not sure why going to battle with the administration’s most popular member is the best campaign strategy for us,” one administration official said of Trump’s decision to go after Fauci Tuesday.

With his diminished White House influence, Fauci has instead sought to speak directly to the public through television appearances, where he has continued to advocate basic public health measures that the administration has flouted – making him unpopular with one regular viewer.

“The main place he sees Dr. Fauci is on TV,” one senior administration official said of Trump.

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U.S. pauses Eli Lilly’s trial of a coronavirus antibody treatment over safety concerns

Eli Lilly’s late-stage trial of its leading monoclonal antibody treatment for the coronavirus has been paused by U.S. health regulators over potential safety concerns, the company confirmed to CNBC on Tuesday. “Safety is of the utmost importance to Lilly. We are aware that, out of an abundance of caution, the ACTIV-3 independent data safety monitoring board (DSMB) has recommended a pause in enrollment,” spokeswoman Molly McCully told CNBC. “Lilly is supportive of the decision by the independent DSMB to cautiously ensure the safety of the patients participating in this study.” The news comes less than 24 hours after Johnson & Johnson confirmed that its late-stage coronavirus vaccine trial was paused after a participant reported an “adverse event” the day before. Dr. Mathai Mammen, global head of the Janssen research and development arm at J&J, told investors on a conference call Tuesday that the company still has “very little information” on the reason for the holdup, including if the patient received the vaccine or the placebo. Preliminary information has been sent to the data safety monitoring board for review, he added. Medical experts note that pauses in large clinical trials are not uncommon. They added it’s possible the bad reaction could be the result of an unrelated illness, and not the drug itself. The review from the data and safety monitoring board will help determine that. The ACTIV-3 trial is designed to test a monoclonal antibody developed by Eli Lilly in combination with Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, an antiviral with emergency use authorization for the virus. It’s one of several ongoing trials that are part of the National Institute of Health’s “Activ” program, which is designed to accelerate the development of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. It is also backed by Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to manufacturer and distribute vaccines to fight Covid-19. Eli Lilly’s drug is part of a class of treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, which are made to act as immune cells that scientists hope can fight the virus. The treatment was developed using a blood sample from one of the first U.S. patients who recovered from Covid-19. AstraZeneca and Regeneron, among other companies, are also working on so-called antibody treatments. Monoclonal antibody treatments hit the headlines this month after news broke that President Donald Trump received an antibody cocktail from Regeneron. As Trump’s health improved, he touted it as a “cure.” But Regeneron’s CEO, Leonard Schleifer, has stressed that more testing is required. Trump has previously touted Eli Lilly’s treatment and others. Earlier this month, when he was sick with Covid-19, he said, “We have these drugs, Eli Lilly and the others that are so good.” “They are in my opinion, remember this, they’re going to say that they’re therapeutic. And I guess they are therapeutic. Some people don’t know how to define therapeutic. I view it different. It’s a cure,” Trump said in a video posted Oct. 7 on Twitter. “For me, I walked in. I didn’t feel good. A short 24 hours later, I was feeling great. I wanted to get out of the hospital. And that’s what I want for everybody. I want everybody to be given the same treatment as your president because I feel great.” No details regarding Eli Lilly’s safety concern are yet known. “When scientists test promising treatments, sometimes unexpected side effects occur,” said Jeremy Faust, a health policy expert and emergency medicine doctor at Brigham and Women’s Health in Boston. Faust was part of the group of scientists that first reported the news via the research site Brief19. “When only a small number of patients have received a compound, it’s hard to tell what’s a real problem and what is noise,” he told CNBC. “That’s why patience and prudence are always warranted before doling out experimental treatments.” Nick Note Nothing good will come of rushing drugs and vaccines to market!

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Dr. Fauci: The Trump Campaign Is ‘In Effect, Harassing Me’

Dr, Anthony Fauci told the Daily Beast that it would be “outrageous” and “terrible” if he was featured in another Trump campaign commercial and it could “come back to backfire” on Team Trump. Explained Fauci: “By doing this against my will, they are in effect harassing me. Since campaign ads are about getting votes, their harassment of me might have the opposite effect of turning some voters off.” Nick Note: Desperate people do desperate Trumps  rallies are spreading the virus infecting people people and sometimes even killing some of them.

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Senate to vote on PPP funding next week – McConnell

https://youtu.be/QeLGiLKKfk0?t=29

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a statement on Tuesday saying that the Senate’s “first order of business” when it returns on Oct. 19 will be to vote on “targeted relief for American workers,” including new funding for the small business Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

Why it matters: House Democrats, Senate Republicans and the Trump administration are still very far apart on key elements of a relief deal, and any push for smaller, more targeted legislation is more of a political maneuver than any thing else.

  • The Senate has largely been left out of the negotiating process between House Speaker Pelosi and the White House, and any deal that results from those conversations will likely not be supported by Senate Republicans.
  • This is McConnell’s way of showing Senate Republicans are still dedicated to some form of coronavirus stimulus, and could serve as a backstop in the event that a new bill is passed in the House that Republicans in the Senate deem unworkable.

Driving the news: McConnell’s statement comes one month after Senate Democrats filibustered a Republican “skinny bill” that focused on school aid, unemployment benefits and assistance for small businesses. Democrats called the package “piecemeal” and said it was “laden with poison pills Republicans know Democrats would never support.”

What they’re saying: “The PPP is a popular program that has saved tens of millions of American jobs. It is so bipartisan that its first round was replenished and extended several times by unanimous consent in both the Senate and the House,” McConnell said in a statement.

  • “Democrats have spent months blocking policies they do not even oppose. They say anything short of their multi-trillion-dollar wish list, jammed with non-COVID-related demands, is “piecemeal” and not worth doing.”
  • “Speaker Pelosi frequently says she feels “nothing” is better than “something.” And she has worked hard to ensure that nothing is what American families get.”

Meanwhile: President Trump, who called off stimulus negotiations with Democrats last week, tweeted on Tuesday morning, “STIMULUS! Go big or go home!!!” It’s unlikely that a package the size that Trump and Democrats are negotiating will win the support of Senate Republicans. Nick Note: Roman bread for the masses, We have come a long was from 2 chickens in every pot!

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You really DO NOT want to take a monkey vaccine

Nick Note: Having a Photographic memory can be a blessing or a course. As i reviewed the Astrazennica vaccine protocols where they splice monKey DNA into the vaccine i recalled a article back from the early 2000’s A that time i was locked in a dispute because i would not allow my kids to be vaccinated. At that time home schooling was coming to a end and it was time to ingratiate them into the traditional joke school system. One of the requirements was vaccine records. The dispute was before the school board and the following article was used to present my case. By the way I won the arguments.. Happy vaccinating……. Its amazing what they forget to tell you. So maybe you should read the article below beforE you let them put a monkey on your back!!!

THE VIRUS AND THE VACCINE
On any list of medical triumphs of the 20th century, polio vaccination is sure to rate a mention. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the shot and sugar-cube vaccines of Jonas Salk, and later Albert Sabin, offered people the first opportunities to protect themselves from a scourge as feared in its day as AIDS is in our own. Few back then grasped that these vaccines might also be a huge, inadvertent, uncontrolled experiment in interspecies viral transmission. But from 1955 to 1963, according to a 1976 US National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study, 98 million Americans alone probably were exposed to polio vaccines contaminated with SV40—a monkey virus that can cause cancers in animals. Now, a July 7 2004 report in New Scientist has raised fears that hundreds of millions of eastern Europeans, Asians, and Africans also may have been exposed to SV40 in Soviet-made polio vaccines. Michele Carbone of Loyola University Medical Center, Chicago, USA, announced at the 2004 Vaccine Cell Substrates meeting (Rockville, MD) that the Soviet vaccine could have been contaminated until the 1980s. This is worrying since, despite 44 years of medical debate, epidemiological studies have yet to establish conclusively whether SV40 has or hasn’t caused cancers in people.
When Salk developed his vaccine, instead of using human tissues, as did the scientists who won a Nobel Prize for first growing poliovirus in tissue culture, he used minced-up rhesus macaque monkey kidneys, which were remarkably efficient poliovirus factories. Those who sought to supplant Salk’s formaldehyde-inactivated vaccine with live, attenuated oral vaccine also used monkey kidney cultures. Despite a manufacturing problem that, at best, left six children who received the vaccine paralysed in the arm, and despite concerns about wild simian viruses, Salk’s shots were declared safe and effective after 1954 field trials. The next year, after grudging approval by sceptical government regulators, free Salk shots were made available throughout the USA.
By 1960, scientists and vaccine manufacturers knew that monkey kidneys were sewers of simian viruses. Such contamination often spoiled cultures, including those of an NIH researcher named Bernice Eddy, who worked on vaccine safety. In 1959, fresh from co-reporting that the mouse polyoma virus could cause cancer in other animals, Eddy tested the rhesus monkey kidney substrate used to make polio vaccine. She injected 154 newborn hamsters with extracts of the cell cultures: 109 developed tumours. Next, she ground up three of the tumours and injected the residue into other hamsters. The animals receiving injections from two of the three tumours developed cancers. But when Eddy put the substance back into the monkey cell culture, nothing happened, and she couldn’t isolate the suspected virus.
In The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine, and the Millions of Americans Exposed, Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher report that in 1960, when Eddy presented her results to her boss, a polio vaccine champion named Joe Smadel, he was livid and disbelieving: “Its implications—that something in the polio vaccine could cause cancer—was an affront to his career.” Her discovery also threatened one of the USA’s most important public-health programmes. “By 1960, tens of millions of Americans had been vaccinated against polio, and it was federal health policy that everyone should be vaccinated and continue to receive Salk booster shots.”

Continue reading “You really DO NOT want to take a monkey vaccine”

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J & J Covid-19 vaccine study paused due to unexplained illness in participant

The study of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine has been paused due to an unexplained illness in a study participant. A document sent to outside researchers running the 60,000-patient clinical trial states that a “pausing rule” has been met, that the online system used to enroll patients in the study has been closed, and that the data and safety monitoring board — an independent committee that watches over the safety of patients in the clinical trial — would be convened. The document was obtained by STAT. Contacted by STAT, J&J confirmed the study pause, saying it was due to “an unexplained illness in a study participant.” The company declined to provide further details. “We must respect this participant’s privacy. We’re also learning more about this participant’s illness, and it’s important to have all the facts before we share additional information,” the company said in a statement. J&J emphasized that so-called adverse events — illnesses, accidents, and other bad medical outcomes — are an expected part of a clinical study, and also emphasized the difference between a study pause and a clinical hold, which is a formal regulatory action that can last much longer. The vaccine study is not currently under a clinical hold. J&J said that while it normally communicates clinical holds to the public, it does not usually inform the public of study pauses. The data and safety monitoring board, or DSMB, convened late Monday to review the case. J&J said that in cases like this “it is not always immediately apparent” whether the participant who experienced an adverse event received a study treatment or a placebo. Though clinical trial pauses are not uncommon — and in some cases last only a few days — they are generating outsized attention in the race to test vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Given the size of Johnson & Johnson’s trial, it’s not surprising that study pauses could occur, and another could happen if this one resolves, a source familiar with the study said. “If we do a study of 60,000 people, that is a small village,” the source said. “In a small village there are a lot of medical events that happen.” On Sept. 8, a large study of another Covid-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University was put on hold because of a suspected adverse reaction in a patient in the United Kingdom. It’s believed that the patient had transverse myelitis, a spinal cord problem. Studies of the vaccine resumed roughly a week after it was paused in the United Kingdom, and have since been restarted in other countries as well. It remains on hold, however, in the United States.  Johnson and Johnson began enrolling volunteers in its Phase 3 study on Sept. 23. Researchers planned to enroll 60,000 participants in the United States and other countries. Nick Note: Rushing vaccine trials is the equivalent of going into jiffyLube to use a grease gun when you need a enema. It may be fast but it could end up really shitty. The J&J ebloa based vaccine and the  AstraZeneca monkey vaccine are both on hold. SO much for the warp speed vaccine. Its the lithium crystals overheating! I hate when that happens

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Joe Biden Leads Donald Trump By 8.5 Points

Joe Biden holds a solid 8.5-point lead over President Donald Trump, barely three weeks ahead of Election Day, the inaugural IBD/TIPP 2020 Presidential Election Tracking Poll finds.

Biden leads Trump, 51.9%-43.4%, in a four-way 2020 election poll of likely voters. Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen has the support of 2.4%, and Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins 0.8%.

In a head-to-head Biden vs. Trump poll, the Democratic nominee holds a commanding 10.4-point advantage, 52.7%-42.3%. Joe Biden holds a 48%-39% lead among likely independent voters. Meanwhile, Biden is having an easier time corralling Democrats than Trump is having in nailing down GOP votes. Biden leads 95%-3% among Democrats. Trump leads 90%-9% among Republicans.

In 2016, almost all presidential election polls pointed to a Hillary Clinton victory over Donald Trump. The IBD/TIPP Poll was one of only two election polls credited with predicting President Trump’s 2016 victory. TIPP, IBD’s polling partner, succeeded in picking up on the greater enthusiasm among Republicans for their candidate.

Yet the latest IBD/TIPP Trump vs. Biden poll has a few stark contrasts with the Trump vs. Clinton race. Most obviously, a majority of likely voters back Biden (51.9%). Yet Clinton’s support topped out around 45% in IBD/TIPP presidential election polls in the final weeks of the 2016 race. Further, Biden’s 9-point lead among independents in the latest IBD/TIPP 2020 election poll is a big turnaround from 2016. Trump carried independents 43%-42% in 2016, according to a postelection Pew Research survey of verified voters.The IBD/TIPP 2020 presidential election poll shows Trump winning 52%-44% among men, narrower than his 11-point advantage in 2016.  Meanwhile, women favor Biden by a wide 59%-36% margin. The 23-point differential is greater than Trump’s 15-point deficit among women in 2016. White voters favor Trump, 50%-45%, but they backed him by a 15-point margin in 2016. White women plan to vote for Biden over Trump, 51%-45%, after narrowly backing the Republican in 2016. Black voters strongly back Biden, 89%-8%. However, Trump could do better among Hispanic voters than his 28%-66% deficit in 2016. He trails Biden among Hispanics, 39%-54% in the latest IBD/TIPP 2020 election poll. Biden is trouncing Trump among voters age 18-44, 62%-32%. Trump has a 51%-46% edge among voters 45-64. The two candidates are tied at 48% among voters 65 and up. Trump won among senior citizens in 2016, 53%-44%, Pew says. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows that Biden’s lead has grown from 6.6 points before the first debate to 9.8 points currently.. President Trump is trying to shore up support among seniors, who are far more susceptible to the coronavirus and who have been critical of his handling of the pandemic. Last week, Trump pledged that he would provide free access to the Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN) antibody drug that he credits with restoring him to full health. The Trump administration also is getting ready to send out drug cards worth $200 to tens of millions of seniors.

Self-described investors, with at least $10,000 in household-owned stocks or mutual funds, back Biden by the slimmest of margins, 49%-48%. The final 2016 IBD presidential election poll showed Trump winning the group, 48%-42%.

Meanwhile, noninvestors are solidly behind Biden, 57%-37%. Regardless of their own voting preferences, investors seem to be warming to a Biden presidency and potential Democratic sweep. That would likely mean higher corporate taxes and higher taxes on investment gains. Yet the stock market’s rally last week came as a Biden victory looked more likely. Wall Street may be relieved that a court fight over the election’s outcome may be avoided. But investors also are hopeful that a Democratic boost in federal spending will offset any downside from tax hikes and more regulation.  Nick Note: I hate polling. Unfortunately people like me whoes job is to analyze things have got to consume them like oxygen in an election season. My sniff here is Uncle Joe’s voter tend to overstate their support for the candidate. in other words his supporters are not rock solid.  Heil Trump voters tend to be fanatics fiercely loyal and understate their support for Trump. My sniff is polling may be overstating Biden’s lead and understating support for Trump. If i take out my wigiee board the buga buga tells me this is a MUCH closer election then the pools are picking up and the race is very close. Trump has six crowd fests scheduled.  All will be  jam packed with screaming Trump Chumps  packed like sardines in a can and of course big dick real men do not wear masks. And hard nipples kick ass babes obviously do not do liposuction and they do not wear masks either.

Continue reading “Joe Biden Leads Donald Trump By 8.5 Points”

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Dr. Fauci says this simple drug that’s already available might reduce coronavirus risks

  • A new coronavirus study shows that vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of COVID-19 complications and deaths, echoing similar findings from earlier this year.
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci has endorsed vitamin D in a recent interview, emphasizing that it might help people who are vitamin D deficient fight a potential covid infection.
  • There’s no randomized clinical trial to prove the effectiveness of vitamin D therapy in COVID-19, however.

The novel coronavirus will remain a significant danger to all of us until effective vaccines and drug therapies are widely available. COVID-19 has killed more than 1 million people worldwide as of this past weekend, out of more than 33.4 million confirmed cases. While it’s true that it’s usually people who suffer from other medical issues and the elderly who are most at risk of death, there have been plenty of exceptions to that rule. Young people, including children who had no other medical problems, have died of COVID-19 complications. On top of that, many of us have preexisting conditions that we’re not even aware of. That’s why it’s so important to protect yourself as well as possible until treatments are widely available.  Dr. Anthony Fauci already endorses. The best part about it is that you might not even need to take it in order to benefit from it. A study claimed a few months ago that vitamin D deficiency had been correlated with COVID-19 complications and death, and another study argued there’s no proof vitamin D can prevent or treat COVID-19. We’ve always told you that nothing is set in stone with coronavirus studies, and more research will be required to confirm early findings. When it comes to vitamin D, we already have more research that indicates sufficient levels can indeed reduce complications and death. The newest vitamin D data comes from the Boston University School of Medicine, via SciTechDaily. Doctors found that patients who were vitamin D sufficient (a blood level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D of at least 30 ng/ml) had a significantly decreased risk for complications, including unconsciousness, hypoxia, and death. People who had enough vitamin D in their systems had lower blood levels of C-reactive protein, which is a marker of inflammation that goes up when an infection is present. Lymphocyte counts were also higher. Those are the immune system cells that can fight illnesses, and which are diminished in COVID-19 cases. The doctors tested vitamin D levels in 235 COVID-19 patients and compared the outcomes of patients who were deficient to those who had sufficient vitamin D.

The researchers wrote that patients older than 40 who were vitamin D sufficient were 51.5% less likely to die from the infection.

Michael Holick, professor of medicine, physiology, biophysics and molecular medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, is one of the authors of the study. Previously, he published a paper concluding that a sufficient amount of vitamin D could reduce the risk of catching coronavirus by 54%. The risk of infection is still there, and vitamin D is not going to be a magical cure for COVID-19. However, the good news here is that vitamin D is something we already get from food. The skin even synthesizes it from sun exposure. Of course, vitamin D is also available as an over-the-counter supplement that anyone can take. Dr. Fauci also recommends vitamin D to possibly reduce the risk of infection. “If you are deficient in vitamin D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection,” the health expert said during an Instagram Live chat with Jennifer Garner a few days ago. “So, I would not mind recommending, and I do it myself taking vitamin D supplements.” Testing for vitamin D deficiency might be advised before taking supplements. As CNBC points out, not all experts agree that routine testing for vitamin D is advised. It’s not just that the test results take longer to process, but they’re also costly and could lead to more people seeking vitamin D supplements. The report notes that there’s not enough scientific evidence to prove that taking vitamin D does anything helpful for people who do not have a vitamin D difficiency. Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern of Bar Ilan University told The Times of Israel on Sunday that vitamin D is “like a steroid,” after publishing what she says is the world’s largest population-based study of its kind. Her team studied a 7,807-strong sample of Israelis who were tested for the coronavirus. It found that the average vitamin D level for people who screened negative was in the internationally-accepted “adequate” range, while the average for those who tested positive fell in the “inadequate” category. Vitamin D levels of less than 20 nanograms per milliliter of blood are considered inadequate.