<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>spion</author><text>The level of evidence isn&amp;#x27;t great yet, but its highly likely that Vitamin D can help modulate the immune system. There is a retrospective study showing a difference between patients that got Vitamin D and those that didn&amp;#x27;t (can&amp;#x27;t find the link, unfortunately), and&lt;p&gt;there is a small Spanish trial of 75 people where 50 got Vitamin D and 25 did not; in the group that did, 1 person needed oxygen whereas in the other group 12 people needed oxygen and one died - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC7456194&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC7456194&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>JshWright</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re missing the third option:&lt;p&gt;People who are more likely to be hospitalized due to COVID are also more likely to be deficient in vitamin D. There doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be a causal relationship at all.</text></item><item><author>agotterer</author><text>The article wasn’t very detailed and I wasn’t able to figure out if you are more likely to catch COVID because you have a vitamin D deficiency or if catching COVID causes a vitamin D deficiency. Anyone know?</text></item><item><author>JohnTHaller</author><text>About 45% of the US population has Vitamin D deficiency. It&amp;#x27;s higher among some populations (elderly as they are more likely to be home-bound, African American as darker skin inhibits UV absorption, obesity due to adipose tissue storage, etc). Those of us further North are more likely to be deficient as well due to decreased exposure during much of the year and being inside or bundled more in winter months.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Over 80% of Covid-19 patients in a hospital study have Vitamin D deficiency</title><url>https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2020/study-finds-over-80-percent-of-covid19-patients-have-vitamin-d-deficiency</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>carlmr</author><text>Yeah, that&amp;#x27;s very likely actually, since the biggest risk group, the elderly, are also one of the groups with the highest levels of vitamin D deficiency.&lt;p&gt;In this study here 84% of the elderly had some amount of vitamin D deficiency (Figure 3).&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC6178567&amp;#x2F;#:~:text=Elderly%20men%20are%20more%20likely,%25%20and%2026%25%2C%20respectively&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC6178567&amp;#x2F;#:~:tex...&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;I do take Vitamin D supplements since they&amp;#x27;re cheap and available, just in case there is something to it, but I wouldn&amp;#x27;t bet on it.</text><parent_chain><item><author>JshWright</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re missing the third option:&lt;p&gt;People who are more likely to be hospitalized due to COVID are also more likely to be deficient in vitamin D. There doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be a causal relationship at all.</text></item><item><author>agotterer</author><text>The article wasn’t very detailed and I wasn’t able to figure out if you are more likely to catch COVID because you have a vitamin D deficiency or if catching COVID causes a vitamin D deficiency. Anyone know?</text></item><item><author>JohnTHaller</author><text>About 45% of the US population has Vitamin D deficiency. It&amp;#x27;s higher among some populations (elderly as they are more likely to be home-bound, African American as darker skin inhibits UV absorption, obesity due to adipose tissue storage, etc). Those of us further North are more likely to be deficient as well due to decreased exposure during much of the year and being inside or bundled more in winter months.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Over 80% of Covid-19 patients in a hospital study have Vitamin D deficiency</title><url>https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2020/study-finds-over-80-percent-of-covid19-patients-have-vitamin-d-deficiency</url></story>