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The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

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Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#101

Post by mertd »

jmull wrote: post #76

On the balance, aren't the risks still heavily against smoking? So what's the point of promoting one benefit of smoking when you still want to advise everyone to stop or never start smoking? This article suggests a coverup, but as the author points out, there's no shortage of science showing that smoking is associated with a lower chance of getting Covid. The author is really complaining about the interpretations and…

I don't understand what's being covered up. Sure it is an interesting phenomenon but purely from an academic perspective. It's not like smoking became a net positive for health. It's literally the definition of non news.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#102

Post by acdha »

graeme wrote: post #82
snowwrestler wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the original SARS and coronaviruses in general are known to spread via droplets in the air, and from the beginning folks assumed this was one way SARS-COV-2 spread. What was unknown was how long the virus could remain viable after the droplets landed on surfaces. If it is a long time, then mishandling a soiled mask could easily undo any benefit of wearing it. This is the same reason people were washing their gro…

It was apparent very early that there were spread patterns only explainable by aerosols. The Diamond Princess was the earliest publicized example, with cases occurring onboard despite isolation in cabins. Japanese experts understood the lesson immediately and implemented a "three C's" approach to counter airborne spread: avoid close contact, closed spaces, and crowds. Western governments and experts and the WHO inste…

Just to be clear, I am not in any way defending the CDC’s botching the understanding that COVID’s primary means of spreading is airborne. I just remember reading about this on social media, including Zeynep’s many posts, without ever seeing those moderated. Given the general tenor of this post, I suspect that the author might have been lumping reasonable claims many experts supported in with more speculative claims.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#103

Post by boopmaster »

boopmaster wrote: post #96

The author's framing of the issue as speech suppression is, in my eyes, far more interesting than the study and backing evidence, and certainly more interesting than contra-claims about acquiring COVID here in this thread. Yet here we are barking at the moon about vitamin D and playing jump to conclusions by forcibly cramming words into the post re: taking up smoking. The point isn't to start smoking because this pos…

afterthought: Author can go ahead and add this thread to list of supporting docs. :-P we're doing all the work fighting over study itself that we'll bury any idea of censored speech.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#104

Post by brookst »

kelnos wrote: post #80
i_am_proteus wrote: post #14

Author compiled a lot of studies on his web log: https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2021/08/smoking-and... The studies do appear to show that smoking cigarettes is correlated with a lower probability of getting the Covid, for a lot of different definitions of "getting the Covid." They also appear to be, by eyeball aggregate, inconclusive as to whether the risk of dying from the Covid is higher or lower for smok…

After being given this information, a reasonable person would conclude that while smoking might decrease their risk of getting COVID, starting a smoking habit (possibly leading to addiction) would mean likely worse health outcomes than just accepting the risk of getting COVID (which can be lowered significantly through much safer means). Unfortunately, there are lot of unreasonable people out there. I would not be su…

Agree, with the nuance that I think the psychology at WHO / CDC / etc is probably focused on existing smokers who may choose not to (try to) quit because of data like this ("WHO says I should keep smoking!")

But there are going to be misinterpretations and bad outcomes no matter what. So I'd err on the side of honesty and integrity, and perhaps trying to mitigate harm by producing data on, say, life expectancies for smokers who quit today versus those who don't, and (presumably) the data that says it's still way better to quit. And if the data doesn't support that, well, data is data.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#105

Post by throwaway22032 »

Does anyone else find this baffling as an avenue of exploration to begin with?

The health impacts of a 30 year old healthy male smoking tobacco massively outweigh what coronavirus would do to them in 99.9 percent of cases, likely higher.

It feels a bit like saying you could reduce your chance of toe cancer by amputating your toe. Theoretically sure, if you're already in a wheelchair, why not, no toes required.

But that's a niche line of enquiry.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#106

Post by snowwrestler »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #93
snowwrestler wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the original SARS and coronaviruses in general are known to spread via droplets in the air, and from the beginning folks assumed this was one way SARS-COV-2 spread. What was unknown was how long the virus could remain viable after the droplets landed on surfaces. If it is a long time, then mishandling a soiled mask could easily undo any benefit of wearing it. This is the same reason people were washing their gro…

The issue of an airborne disease is not just a matter of droplets, but whether infectious particles are aerosolized such that they hang in the air for hours. The 6 feet social distancing rule only makes sense in the context of droplet based, non-aerosol transmission. It was only after more than a year into the pandemic that CDC acknowledged that COVID is airborne and updated their guidance. https://www.nytimes.com/20…

“Airborne” and “aerosols” are not synonyms. You’re right about aerosols but the question above is whether we knew that the virus traveled in a manner that a mask could interfere with. That includes short-range droplets, not just aerosols.

We knew very early on that droplets were likely and that masks could block many droplets. The question was whether the mask would itself become a major vector in the process.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#107

Post by rhino369 »

graeme wrote: post #82
snowwrestler wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the original SARS and coronaviruses in general are known to spread via droplets in the air, and from the beginning folks assumed this was one way SARS-COV-2 spread. What was unknown was how long the virus could remain viable after the droplets landed on surfaces. If it is a long time, then mishandling a soiled mask could easily undo any benefit of wearing it. This is the same reason people were washing their gro…

It was apparent very early that there were spread patterns only explainable by aerosols. The Diamond Princess was the earliest publicized example, with cases occurring onboard despite isolation in cabins. Japanese experts understood the lesson immediately and implemented a "three C's" approach to counter airborne spread: avoid close contact, closed spaces, and crowds. Western governments and experts and the WHO inste…

While it took way way way too long for the scientific community to recognize airborne spread, it's hard to say that stuff like Diamond Princess could ONLY be explained by airborne spread. It was early in the pandemic, the disease was poorly understood. It's hard to know if the quarantine was effective--passengers could have continued socializing, sick workers distributing food may have been spreading it, etc.

It's a big leap from a single data point.

The more damning issue is that the assumption that it wasn't airborne in the first place wasn't really well founded.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#108

Post by enneff »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #97
i_am_proteus wrote: post #14

Author compiled a lot of studies on his web log: https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2021/08/smoking-and... The studies do appear to show that smoking cigarettes is correlated with a lower probability of getting the Covid, for a lot of different definitions of "getting the Covid." They also appear to be, by eyeball aggregate, inconclusive as to whether the risk of dying from the Covid is higher or lower for smok…

> on his web log Also called blog, since ~20 years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Edit out swipes.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#109

Post by grumple »

askiiart wrote: post #10

[Snopes]( https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/05/07/does-nicotine-protect... ) - from 2020, but unbiased, at least > The researchers have proposed nicotine attaches to the ACE2 receptors, thereby preventing the virus from attaching and potentially reducing the amount of virus that can get into a person’s lung cells. As for potential bias: > Further, around 60% of the hospitalised patients in the study were ex-smokers (s…

Found an interesting study about the ACE2 receptors and nicotine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7942220/

Suggest nicotine increases the expression of these receptors and makes covid spread more in vitro. This doesn't really jive with the studies of human population, I guess. It does suggest something weird here.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#110

Post by bena »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #14

Author compiled a lot of studies on his web log: https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2021/08/smoking-and... The studies do appear to show that smoking cigarettes is correlated with a lower probability of getting the Covid, for a lot of different definitions of "getting the Covid." They also appear to be, by eyeball aggregate, inconclusive as to whether the risk of dying from the Covid is higher or lower for smok…

Also, I'd imagine the people who were smoking when COVID started being a thing were smokers well before then.

So whatever factors make smokers less likely to contract COVID may be because of some of the long term effects of smoking. So picking up smoking isn't necessarily going to make you immediately safer.

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