Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagVitamin D

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Coronavirus pandemia concept, planet hologram

Supercomputer Provides a New Clue re COVID-19 Fatalities

A surprising pattern I found last April: Southern hemisphere countries had significantly lower death rates than northern ones

Back in April, I ran an analysis on COVID-19 death rates in relation to Earth’s hemispheres. I took the COVID-19 death rate for each country that reported more than 500 cases and plotted its death rate against its latitude. A surprising pattern emerged: Southern hemisphere countries had significantly lower death rates than northern ones: That is not a statistical fluke because the graph comprises 198 different countries and the best fit quadratic curve parameters have statistical significance scores of 0.12, 0.07 and 0.0000016 for the x^2, x and c components respectively. What could explain this pattern? As I noted at the time, one big difference is that, when it is cold and cloudy in the northern hemisphere, it is warm Read More ›

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Vitamin D gelcaps.

Vitamin D and COVID-19: Is It Data or Noise?

Because random clusters occur naturally in large numbers, only randomized, controlled trials can tell us

Random data shows geographic clusters. Thus some locations will inevitably have higher COVID-19 rates than others. As my example shows, associating these clusters with personal characteristics after the fact is not convincing scientific evidence. That’s where randomized, controlled trials are needed.

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