RCE Charts, page-67

Vitamin D is NOT a cure for the virus, it's a health supplement. It is linked to immune system health and other benefits. It is not a short term solution to anything, it is something you take in the long term in order to gain some health benefits. The real take is "healthy people get less sick from diseases", that's all. Simple right? I'll give you an analogy, imagine a group of people are suddenly told they have to run an entire marathon in a week's time. Those that have been maintaining their fitness for years will have an easier time than those that are sedentary. Will rushing out and doing a quick week of training help? Not at all, the marathon will wreck them.

Zinc and Vitamin C are in the same category. These are supplements to help long term health (maybe, if you are deficient). They aren't a cure to anything, they just might help you be healthier. And healthier people are better at surviving diseases. It's really that simple. I've been seeing news for months suggesting people take Vitamin D supplements, I don't know why you think it's being suppressed, I see it everywhere. I've taken vitamin D supplements for at least 10 years. Taking supplements is good, just don't expect them to fix any immediate issues.

As for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, that's more complicated. These are easily available, already approved drugs with anti-viral properties, so were tested extensively in the early days of the virus, along with every other anti-viral drug they could find. They threw EVERYTHING at this thing desperately trying to find a solution. EVERY nation tested EVERY drug they could. And so you got articles like this: https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/French-researcher-in-Marseille-posts-successful-Covid-19-coronavirus-drug-trial-results that "demonstrated" positive results. Note that there was only 24 patients in the study. But the virus has a mortality rate of roughly 1%, therefore statistically all 24 people were going to recover anyway. And that's the issue, these early studies didn't actually prove anything, they just showed that it "might" be positive. But political leaders and supporting media commentators that were desperate for a solution to the virus, latched onto these early results and promoted them as the big cure everyone was waiting for, because it was politically beneficial for them to do so. But the science and evidence was NEVER clear on it. Any claim of a "cure" was false, there was never enough evidence to make such a claim. So why not just take those drugs anyway, just in case? Well these drugs have some nasty side effects, and people have died trying to self dose on them to cure covid. The very real damage these drugs have been known to cause outweighs the theoretical and unverified benefits they MIGHT have, so it's been deemed safest not to recommend them. In time much larger studies were done, such as https://www.recoverytrial.net/news/statement-from-the-chief-investigators-of-the-randomised-evaluation-of-covid-19-therapy-recovery-trial-on-hydroxychloroquine-5-june-2020-no-clinical-benefit-from-use-of-hydroxychloroquine-in-hospitalised-patients-with-covid-19?fbclid=IwAR2vg7IV5MhTS_gH4QXERwFJN03wS7fREdb0QB11NBfbYsg4nvR4qVKja7M That one had over 4600 patients, and it was properly randomized with a control group. There are many other similar studies out there too. None of these large, properly done studies showed any benefits for these drugs in either mortality rate or hospitalization time. So were the original studies wrong? No, the studies were what they were, it's all just more evidence. It was the conclusion of "we found a cure" that was never true, science doesn't work like that.

Science doesn't deal in absolutes, it's just a big pile of evidence and assumptions. We just build as much evidence as possible and draw a conclusion that seems overwhelmingly likely to be true. Gravity is just a theory of course, but one we have virtually unlimited evidence to show it's true. But maybe one day someone will find a way to drop a rock such that it floats up into space instead of falling, and when that happens we'll rethink it. Until then our assumption that gravity is true has led to space stations, satellites, space probes, rockets and much more. The assumption that gravity is not true leads to dead bodies at the bottom of cliffs. One assumption has led to new interesting things, the other... not so much. And that's fundamentally what science is, assumptions built on assumptions. If these assumptions unlock new and exciting things, keep going and see where else it leads. If these assumptions lead to failure and confusion, then maybe try something else.

I have a higher education in science, I understand how this stuff works. andrewk65, I can tell that you don't. That's not an insult, most people don't, there's plenty of other important jobs we need people to do than science. So we rely on our leaders and the media to interpret these scientific things. Usually it lines up, but sometimes you get times when the scientific evidence is contrary to what the leaders want. This leads to personal attacks, conspiracies and confusion as people try to make sense of information that is diametrically opposed. People don't know what to think, it's like when you were a kid and your mom and dad are fighting. Who do you believe? And as more and more evidence comes out, this disconnect between science and our leaders can become even MORE wild. We're certainly seeing a resurgence of this over the years. People get confused, angry, frustrated, just like the kid and their fighting parents.

So how do you make sense of it all? Well, unfortunately it's very difficult to figure out what our leader's motivations are (although in some ways, it's not complicated at all...). But science on the other hand tends to lay things out quite openly. Studies go into a lot of detail about their methodology, what their assumptions were going in, what the raw results really were. It's not easy to read, especially for someone not educated in this stuff. But it's out there. Science explains itself thoroughly, it's just too complicated for most people. Just the nature of our increasingly complicated world. So if things aren't lining up between what some people are saying and the science, then one thing you can do is just dig into the science and see for yourself. Of course the science isn't always right, the assumptions it makes can be wrong. Or the data collected badly. It's not easy, but at least things will start to make a bit more sense. It's a step forward at least.

This is why science education is so important, because it means people aren't so dependent on other people telling them what the scientific evidence means, they have the ability to read the data and figure out things on their own.