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The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

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Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#221

Post by nickelcitymario »

juve1996 wrote: post #183
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) a…

> Either outcome is bad: it's either clickbait (hence loses my trust)

This is fair. I do think it's only suggested in the headline, not the article. I don't trust anyone, though, so the use of clickbait doesn't make me trust him any less. Also, I don't think the article requires trust. It's an idea, a theory, with which you can look at the evidence and decide on your own. Just like any other article out there.

That being said, lack of trust is one of the biggest problems in the world today, by my estimation, so it's not like I'm offering any solution here.

> Evidence accumulates, and opinions are changed.

Agreed in full. I'm not arguing against science or the scientific method. I'm simply saying we need to be aware that adopting the scientific method does not, in it of itself, inoculate us from bias. Which I'm pretty sure is a statement any scientist would agree with, so I'm not sure we're disagreeing about anything at all.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#222

Post by incomingpain »

This came out very early in covid. It was at a time the only available vaccine. Ivermectin kind of came out about the same time. It's understood why it works as the article explains.

But isn't this akin to the cure for cancer is anthrax? The cure is worse than the disease.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#223

Post by youngtaff »

standardUser wrote: post #150
youngtaff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anecdotally my only family member who regularly smokes just got COVID. I’ve never had Covid either despite repeated close contact with others who’ve had it I smoked for 9 months over 35 years ago but I think it’s safe to say I’d be classed as a non-smoker

"I’ve never had Covid either" That you know of. Like many infections, not everyone develops symptoms.

Indeed, but I also tested at least twice weekly for over a year (and others in my household tested positively during this time)

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#224

Post by josefresco »

brewdad wrote: post #45
Izkata wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anecdotally my only family member who regularly smokes just got COVID. Took nearly 3 years, that's pretty good ;)

They didn't say whether it was their first time getting COVID.

I think it was! And their symptoms were minor - go figure!

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#225

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

RobotToaster wrote: post #135
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No ethics board in the world will approve an RCT of cigarettes for Covid, so you're asking for an unobtainable standard of evidence here.

Nicotine patches or inhalers would be an option? Assuming it is the nicotine and not a different chemical.

Like again, without incredibly strong empirical evidence, no ethics board will recommend a study on nicotine.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#226

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

Imnimo wrote: post #86
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No ethics board in the world will approve an RCT of cigarettes for Covid, so you're asking for an unobtainable standard of evidence here.

I disagree that that is the only way of constructing a study which is effective in investigating this question. I also don't accept that the fact an RCT is not viable would somehow imply that we should draw out conclusions from studies like the above.

Well if we can't run RCT's, then we need to rely on observational studies, right? Can you suggest a better way of investigating this question?

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#227

Post by vintermann »

edanm wrote: post #210
dionidium wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, if you had a study which compared moderate drinkers to non-drinkers, but not carve out "cannot drink due to other medication" from the second group, you get a more discriminatory result from the study. This is in fact what seems to have been underneath all those studies 10-25 years ago that seemed to show that non-drinkers have worse health outcomes than moderate drinkers. The problem is that "non-drin…

Oh really? That sounds super plausible. Do you have a good source for that? I'd love to dig a bit deeper on this as the whole "drinking once a day is good" thing is something that comes up a lot.

From what I understand, it's hard to know exactly how non-drinkers are different (besides not drinking), but the nail in the coffin for the moderate drinking-endorsing studies which tried to correct for all the factors they could think of, was the rise of Mendelian randomization studies.

Some people have gene variants that interfere with alcohol digestion, effectively making hangovers come much faster and harder. Because these people drink less than other people for a well-understood reason, and are otherwise like everyone else (the gene variants are well mixed into the populations where they occur), it can be used as a causal wedge to pry apart the health contribution from alcohol from the contribution of basically anything else.

And when they did this, the supposed health benefits of alcohol, which were already smaller the more reasonable things you controlled for, vanished entirely.

You can look up meta studies of Mendelian randomization studies on alcohol use on Cochrane and so on of if you want to dig deeper into it.

There has been some pushback, trying to argue that if you don't assume the effect of alcohol to be linear (I.e, don't assume a normal dose-response relationship as you would by default on pretty much anything else), then there's too little data to tell. I don't buy that, as you can probably guess.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#228

Post by vintermann »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #73
gopalv wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The studies do appear to show that smoking cigarettes is correlated with a lower probability of getting the Covid The problem is that non-smokers is not a single category of people, so the confounding factor for the correlation is "why X does not smoke". For example, if you had a study which compared moderate drinkers to non-drinkers, but not carve out "cannot drink due to other medication" from the second group, y…

There is no such thing as a confounding factor for a correlation. It only matters for causality. I will continue to maintain that, given this evidence amidst the existing evidence that smoking is not good for you, you should not start smoking for reasons related to health risks from the Covid.

This is technically correct, but it hardly matters, because the author clearly wants you do draw casual conclusions from this correlation.

Even though looks a lot like a classic example of collider bias, where obesity looks like it protects you from dysglycemia.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#229

Post by jgalt212 »

NoPie wrote: post #208
jgalt212 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Equally we have many studies showing that vitamin D helps to reduce risk from covid (hint: it doesn't). How so?

Because people did a bunch of small, poor-quality studies that seeded to show improvement. But when we did larger scale, properly controlled, randomized studies, where we gave people vitamin D, it didn't show much of an effect. And yet people persist in different theories why it is so. I don't know the mechanism, but randomized, placebo-controlled studies currently are gold standard in medicine. Their results are muc…

I dunno.

The only thing convincing that I could find was that a single high doses of Vitamin D had no effect on outcome. No other studies seemed conclusive.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#230

Post by thenerdhead »

aradox66 wrote: post #177
thenerdhead wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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+

smoking cigarettes is also a well established treatment for ulcerative colitis symptoms. Usually not prescribed for the obvious reasons https://www.healthline.com/health/ulcerative-colitis-and-smo...

> Researchers think this may be due to nicotine’s ability to stop the release of inflammation-producing cells in the digestive tract. This anti-inflammatory action may, in turn, stop the immune system from mistakenly attacking good cells in the intestines.

Wow. That sounds very similar to some of the current theories of long covid.

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