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The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

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Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#181

Post by notahacker »

thenerdhead wrote: post #146
notahacker wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has spent his entire career attacking anti-smoking campaigns both as an author and the reason why the Institute for Economic Affairs was Big Tobacco's favourite think tank, so assembling this sort of list of "evidence" is par for the course for him. Back in the day when "long COVID" was an unknown phenomenon and vaccines a dim and distant dream, the medical profession had already spotted the interesting co…

That would be wild if a treatment to long covid is smoking tobacco or nicotine patches. Mostly because no sane doctor would think to try that. How long did you try them for? I would imagine it would take awhile for your body to get acclimated to it for effects to take on. 4-6 weeks+

A few days, on the assumption that my body was taking too long to fight off the infection in which case the hypothesized property of inhibiting virus replication via ACE2 pathways might actually have been useful. Came to the conclusion that lingering symptoms were more post-viral stuff (as I said, only just starting to be recorded with respect to COVID at the time) so the nicotine was utterly pointless.

A slight nicotine buzz is hardly a huge acclimatisation (which was sort of the point of thinking it was low-risk to try) and I didn't exactly want to get used to it enough develop a dependency on it!

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#182

Post by juve1996 »

oblib wrote: post #145
nickelcitymario wrote: post #46

Having read the article and the comments here, I feel like we're missing the main point. The point of the article wasn't actually about smoking. At least that's not what I took from it. I also don't think the author is genuinely claiming there's a conspiracy here. Instead, what I took from it, is that being a scientist does not mean you're immune to prejudicial opinion, and that the scientific community is not immune…

You did a great job of summing up what I felt after reading the article and then reading comments here. I've lived long enough to see things that folks have pointed out get scorched by naysayers and later confirmed to be true. One example that's stuck with me over the years is where Monarch Butterflies spend the winter. When I was growing up we were told "No one knows", and that was true. Then, in the 1970s, some guy…

For every random "expert" who is right there are likely millions of wrong ones.

In tech terms, it's like the "idea" guy. We need to have some level of curation, that yes, will be wrong at singular time points. The point of a process is continual improvement, not being perfect at every singular point in time.

That includes studies too. The process takes time. Unfortunately the government and public have to act ahead of time. And the media of course has to make their $$$.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#183

Post by juve1996 »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #46

Having read the article and the comments here, I feel like we're missing the main point. The point of the article wasn't actually about smoking. At least that's not what I took from it. I also don't think the author is genuinely claiming there's a conspiracy here. Instead, what I took from it, is that being a scientist does not mean you're immune to prejudicial opinion, and that the scientific community is not immune…

> I also don't think the author is genuinely claiming there's a conspiracy here.

So the author calls it a "cover up." A "Great" cover-up. But he's not really saying it's a cover-up? Either outcome is bad: it's either clickbait (hence loses my trust), or he's claiming a cover-up when there isn't one.

> In theory, the scientific method should resolve that. But in practice, scientists (including the medical community) are just as apt as anyone to want to confirm their biases and dismiss difficult evidence.

Over time the scientific method works. People change. Facts don't. Evidence accumulates, and opinions are changed.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#184

Post by Alex3917 »

jumanjijumanji wrote: post #167
Alex3917 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Equally we have many studies showing that vitamin D helps to reduce risk from covid (hint: it doesn't). But we know the reason for this; in order to get the circulatory and anti-viral benefits of vitamin D, you need to be exposed to a sufficient amount of UVA. But most folks who are getting a sufficient amount of UVA are also getting enough UVB to make enough vitamin D in the first place, which is what always cause…

I'm sure I'm just misunderstanding, but I don't follow the explanation. What do UVA and UVB have to do with this, and why does that lead to weird results?

The reason covid is dangerous is because it binds overly tightly to your ACE2 receptors on the cells in your endothelium and damages them, and when enough of these receptors are damaged the cells die. This can cause all sorts of issues like autoimmune cascades, blood clots, dysregulation of blood pressure and heart rate, etc.

The reason vitamin D is protective is because when you're exposed to UVA, the vitamin D acts as an enzyme that your body uses to produce nitric oxide in your skin and capillaries. Nitric oxide is directly antiviral, but even more importantly it upregulates your ACE2 receptors. With more ACE2 receptors there is less damage caused when some of them are destroyed, which means you are less at risk for blood clots, problems with your heart and blood pressure, deadly autoimmune cascades, etc.

Basically being exposed to UVB causes your body to produce vitamin D, but once you have the vitamin D you need exposure to UVA for your body to produce nitric oxide, which is what causes the health benefits.

The reason smoking is beneficial for covid btw is because nicotine also upregulates the density of your ACE2 receptors. And the reason women are less likely to die is also, you guessed it, because they have more ACE2 receptors.

Aside from vitamin D, you can also obviously upregulate your ACE2 receptors by taking any other food that causes your body to produce more nitric oxide, and/or by taking any ACE inhibitor. OTC things in this category include garlic and hawthorne, and most of the other foods that are commonly used to lower blood pressure.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#185

Post by xphilter »

Izkata wrote: post #19
xphilter wrote: post #15

Smoking cover up? Goodness. Let’s assume you’re right and smoking prevents Covid. The answer would be to get everyone to start smoking??? Get everyone hooked on nicotine? If the goal is to prevent Covid, masks are better—they’re cheap, easy, and have no side effects. (Which drives people mad, but imagine telling them to start smoking instead. Actually I could see the anti-maskers firing up a box a day lol).

The next step would be to figure out why and if it can be duplicated without the negative effects.

Sure, this guy can go fund that or submit a proposal for funding. I just don’t see how someone jumps to cover up…

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#186

Post by xphilter »

LanceH wrote: post #54
xphilter wrote: post #15

Smoking cover up? Goodness. Let’s assume you’re right and smoking prevents Covid. The answer would be to get everyone to start smoking??? Get everyone hooked on nicotine? If the goal is to prevent Covid, masks are better—they’re cheap, easy, and have no side effects. (Which drives people mad, but imagine telling them to start smoking instead. Actually I could see the anti-maskers firing up a box a day lol).

> Smoking cover up? Goodness. Let’s assume you’re right and smoking prevents Covid. The answer would be to get everyone to start smoking? The answer isn't to lie to people for their own good, and there was a lot of that going on with regard to Covid.

In what way have there been lies?

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#187

Post by godshatter »

akimball wrote: post #174
noelsusman wrote: post #99

This thread will surely devolve into a general repository for COVID contrarian angst, but the broader point in this article is an interesting one. I would summarize it by saying there's an asymmetry in evidence demanded for a claim based on whether or not it agrees with the conclusion obtained by reasoning from first principles. The author seems to be saying that rigorous, peer-reviewed, observational studies should…

Since the interactions of ACE2 and nicotine are well-known, my priors favor the benefit of nicotine in this pandemic. They remain neutral, consequently, with regard to smoking, because while smoking does deliver nicotine, it also does lung damage with heat and particulates, and delivers carcinogenic and oxidative creosotes.

The thing that bugs me is that instead of taking the well-known interactions of ACE2 receptors and nicotine as a starting point and looking at how nicotine binds to the ACE2 receptor and trying to find something less addictive to take it's place they just sweep it under the rug for whatever reason.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#188

Post by GianFabien »

When TB was prevalent, tobacco smoking was often considered as a preventive measure. It isn't entirely inconceivable that the toxic compounds in smoke kill some viruses, etc. Shame that it is also toxic to the mouth, throat and especially the lungs.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#189

Post by noelsusman »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #112
noelsusman wrote: post #99

This thread will surely devolve into a general repository for COVID contrarian angst, but the broader point in this article is an interesting one. I would summarize it by saying there's an asymmetry in evidence demanded for a claim based on whether or not it agrees with the conclusion obtained by reasoning from first principles. The author seems to be saying that rigorous, peer-reviewed, observational studies should…

The data is the data. If the data that agrees with you is "good data", and the data that disagrees with you "needs to reach a higher standard", that is how inaccurate beliefs get entrenched.

I wish it was that simple, but it's not. Data has flaws and limitations and is subject to interpretation. This isn't like math where we can prove the answer to a question is true with absolute certainty.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#190

Post by bacchusracine »

mikem170 wrote: post #49
bacchusracine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but unbiased, at least It's Snopes. No such thing. They sold their credibility for a mess of money and political activism. No refunds.

> They sold their credibility for a mess of money and political activism Can you provide any additional details, references, and/or specific examples? I haven't used snopes in a long while, but was impressed at the time, particularly that they always sited references, exploring both sides of an issue. I always came away feeling better informed. But I'm open to changing my opinion if there is justification to do so.

>Can you provide any additional details, references, and/or specific examples?

Sure.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/fact-check-snopes-biased-read...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4730092/Snopes-brin...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deansterlingjones/snope...

https://nypost.com/2022/02/16/snopes-latest-example-of-fact-...

>I haven't used snopes in a long while, but was impressed at the time, particularly that they always sited references, exploring both sides of an issue. I always came away feeling better informed.

There was a point that nearly any radical, strange, urban legend seeming, or truthy article that crossed my path was immediately plugged into Snopes for a fact check. Even when they ended it with a shrug I usually felt like I'd at least investigated a bit. Usually if nothing else I would get pointed towards other sources to try to nail down whether something was factual or not. Then some point around the 2016 election it seemed as though Snopes began straining at gnats to try to falsify things that they admitted were essentially true. They started to resemble Polifact.

You know the game, 'Ackchyually it's not half of all people polled, it's only 49.9% of respondents.' That kind of thing. After they poked at Gell-Mann Amnesia effect on things I knew about, having already researched them a few too many times I started writing them off. When I started seeing them as a fact checker on Facebook pulling the Polifact game too many times it became obvious they'd sold out to the political apparatus.

I linked to some of what's been going on behind the scenes above, you can choose whether or not to believe those things but you'll have to do your own research, which is ultimately what my loss of respect for Snopes taught me in the end. No matter what it is, you should do your own research and quit thinking that you can always trust the authority. If the past few years taught us anything, it ought to have taught us that.

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