Covid and misguided government policy
If I could get the attention of political leaders and their policy advisors, I would point out that the COVID-19 crisis stems from misguided government policies.
For example, the American Heart Association’s six decades long anti-saturated fat campaign has made a large portion of humanity fat, metabolically unhealthy, and vulnerable to COVID-19 infections and complications. Excerpt from an article entitled “On the Role of Unsaturated Fats in Severe COVID-19”: Separately, on analyzing global COVID-19 mortality data and comparing it with 12 risk factors for mortality, they found unsaturated fat intake to be associated with increased mortality. This was based on the dietary fat patterns of 61 countries in the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization database. Surprisingly, they found saturated fats to be protective.
A University of Bergen, Norway press release says, “It has been thought for more than half a century that saturated fats in the diet promote heart disease by increasing blood cholesterol. However, a new model explains why this so-called ‘diet-heart hypothesis’, which has had a major influence on dietary guidelines, may have an alternative explanation...elevated blood cholesterol caused by metabolic disruptions must be uncoupled from elevated blood cholesterol caused by a major change in intake of dietary saturated fatty acids.”
CDC refusal to acknowledge that vitamin D sufficiency can prevent COVID-19 infections and complications is the other major mistake that needs to be corrected. In a Jan. op-ed entitled “Don’t Let COVID-19 Patients Die With Vitamin D Deficiency,” former Surgeon General of the United States Richard Carmona and colleagues said, “It is our responsibility as physicians not to wait for perfect evidence when making life-and-death decisions. Given the safety profile of vitamin D, the 40% prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the U.S., and the fact that this season will likely be the deadliest phase of the pandemic to date, we need to act now. Identifying and eradicating vitamin D deficiency with early and aggressive supplementation in COVID-19 has the potential to save thousands of lives and should be one of our highest public health priorities.”
Current CDC recommendation regarding Vitamin D: “There are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of vitamin D for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19.”
In the final analysis, policy advisors in the top echelons of government bureaucracy are either ignorant of the science or are serving the interests of the food manufacturing industry, agribusiness, and manufacturers of pharmaceuticals. Perhaps it’s a little of both.
David Brown lives in Kalispell