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The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

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Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#211

Post by moistly »

godshatter wrote: post #187
akimball wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What makes you think “they” are not researching ACE2 binding agents? Have you actually searched for studies & research, or are you posting lazy conspiratorial blarg?

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#212

Post by psychphysic »

robocat wrote: post #198
psychphysic wrote: post #171

This is neat I'll have to dig into it. I love this kind of inconvenient result. That said. Why was ivermectin and hydroxy-chloroquinine promoted so aggressively and successfully but not smoking? That's similar to if the moon landing was fake why didn't the Soviets point it out? I believe asthmatics were also not as negatively affected as initially expected. That was put down to them being more likely to shield and us…

> If the moon landing was fake why didn't the Soviets point it out? Fortunately we now have a “search engine” that can find answers to these questions, and more: Ladies and gentlemen, it is with a heavy heart that I must report to you that the 1969 moon landing, hailed as one of the greatest achievements of the United States of America, was in fact a masterful deception. According to our sources, the United States, l…

That's amazing!

Like an Info Wars I'd actually watch.

What was the prompt? Surely not just the quote?

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#214

Post by dusted »

The intuition was probably that the risks from smoking were higher than that of covid..

For starters, not everyone is going to catch covid, but everyone taking up "preventive" smoking is going to become a smoker and be included in the well-known statistics relating to that.

Also, people are extremely drawn to "indulgent" solutions.. The mental gymnastics we do to excuse "a little bit of X is healthy for Y" are astounding as long as X also just so happens to work on the brains reward systems..

Coffee, wine, chocolate, relaxation.. We're strongly motivated to seek out their benefits.. We're generally less motivated to do the same for plain water, healthy diet and exercise.

Even hinting there might be _something_ _anything_ positive about smoking will in my opinion, without cause more people to take it up/keep it up and cause more self-harm than the good it could possible do for them.

Is that a coverup ? Or is it simply not saying something that's basically going to be misunderstood to the point of being wrong?

There are things that are true in very specific circumstances, but when uttered to the general public, will mean something entirely different and no longer be true.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#215

Post by eurasiantiger »

2devnull wrote: post #158
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…

People just stand farther away from smokers, even outdoors. Because smokers stink. And if your having trouble breathing cause of the Covid, you will go to even greater lengths to not get close to smokers. But also, people with chronic respiratory problems, ie pretty much all smokers, you won’t notice you have mild Covid. Everyday of being a smoker is like having mild Covid, so less likely to get tested etc. Lastly sm…

> smokers are on average lower IQ

Source?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18606723/

> Results: Lower IQ measured at ages 18 to 20 was weakly associated with increased prevalence of smoking, independently of indicators of mental illness and social misbehavior measured in late adolescence. By contrast, smoking cessation later in life among those who smoked at ages 18 to 20 was not associated with IQ. Among smokers, lower IQ was significantly associated with a lower level of smoking after adjusting for other factors.

> Conclusion: Low IQ was associated with an increased prevalence of smoking in adolescence. However, the main part of this association disappeared after adjustment for measures of mental health and social function in early life. IQ was not associated with likelihood of quitting smoking.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#216

Post by eurasiantiger »

RajT88 wrote: post #168
akimball wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very actionable: Give nicotine to patients. No smoking required.

Yes. That is also a terrible idea. Worse than off-brand uses of other medications, because it is addictive on top of being unproven.

Tobacco addiction stems from psychoactive ”nicotine boosters” both preexisting in the tobacco plant as well as intentionally added to commercial cigarettes. Pure nicotine is not significantly habit-forming by itself. Just don’t combine it with coffee.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#217

Post by eurasiantiger »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #176
akimball wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very actionable: Give nicotine to patients. No smoking required.

Are you sure nicotine is the active ingredient here that's mitigating the COVID? It's certainly what smokers crave but the COVID virus could be affected by some other part of the smoke.

Smokers crave something else than nicotine. It is just a convenient boogeyman. There are studies where tobacco addicts are given the choice between getting nicotine intravenously or smoking denicotinized cigarettes. An overwhelming majority prefers smoking denicotinized cigarettes.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#218

Post by [deleted] »

akimball wrote: post #163
Fomite wrote: post #155

I don't think this has been particularly ignored - in epidemiology circles, the reaction, by and large was "Huh. That's weird - I wonder why that is?" But it's also not particularly actionable . In terms of a modifiable intervention, "Quick, everyone take up smoking!" is a horrible idea, so it remains in the domain of "A scientific curiosity, and a rare 'W' for one of the worst voluntary health risks one can have." T…

It is very actionable: Give nicotine to patients. No smoking required.

[deleted]

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#219

Post by shapefrog »

blindriver wrote: post #141

I distinctly remember this fact very early on in 2020 and thought it was pretty interesting. I am actually shocked that this inconvenient truth has been completely buried.

If you know about something then how is it that the thing in question has been hidden from you?

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#220

Post by tinus_hn »

fragmede wrote: post #199
tinus_hn wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here YouTube itself is stating you can’t contradict local health authorities on COVID transmission: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en It’s a really stupid policy because the ‘truth’ depends on who your local health authorities are, they can easily contradict.

Given that YouTube is region aware, why is it stupid? Just index to whatever the local health authority says and show only items which agree with that.

It’s stupid because there is a pretense they are defending the truth, while the difference between what local authorities claim make it plainly obvious there either is no truth or if there is a truth it can’t ever be what half of the authorities are saying and thus what YouTube is defending.

And that’s of course just an example the dumb anti science stance of forbidding disagreement with the ‘scientific’ status quo, it really puts YouTube in the position of the church silencing Galileo. The church was as sure they were right as are those local authorities.

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