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The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

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Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#241

Post by robocat »

psychphysic wrote: post #212
robocat wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Now forgotten. I spent a bit of time tweaking a prompt and adding details to get the result to be sensibly coherent. I think I asked it to write it in the style of a 1970s newsreader.

Like Google searches, there seems to be an knack to tweaking prompts, which you get better at the more you practice, and by reading other people's prompts.

I just spent five minutes asking GPT what prompt would generate the text! Unfortunately I couldn't get a usable result.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#242

Post by shapefrog »

blindriver wrote: post #239
shapefrog wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

English probably isn't your first language, but "buried" and "hidden" have different connotations. When I said it was buried, it means all the subsequent studies. This is what the article was about. I remember early during the pandemic articles talking about how smoking appeared have a protective effect, and then it was no longer talked about. I thought maybe it was disproven but it doesn't seem to be the case, it wa…

I guess they burried this study, otherwise you would definately have seen it.

https://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2021/09/12/thoraxjnl-20...

Compared with never-smokers, current smokers had higher risks of hospitalisation (OR 1.80, 95% CI 1.26 to 2.29) and mortality (smoking 1–9/day: OR 2.14, 95% CI 0.87 to 5.24; 10–19/day: OR 5.91, 95% CI 3.66 to 9.54; 20+/day: OR 6.11, 95% CI 3.59 to 10.42).

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#243

Post by akimball »

MockObject wrote: post #236
eurasiantiger wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then why do nicotine gums and patches work?

Desperation. Acetyl aldéhydes in tobacco are highly addictive. Nicotine supplements do not supply these, but folks manage to quit tobacco using them because they are motivated, and they are the best available alternative.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#244

Post by WhackyIdeas »

akimball wrote: post #169
WhackyIdeas wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems controversial even saying this, and a bit absurd… But I am a heavy smoker and have somehow managed to dodge Covid so far. It is probably coincidence, but I would love it to be studied into more no matter how inconvenient it may be…

I'm a non-smoker but use nicotine daily. My mother (nicotine free) died of COVID, but I have never had it. But we are mere anecdotes, and prove nothing.

Sorry to hear about your loss. I haven’t experienced loss on that scale yet.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#245

Post by eurasiantiger »

MockObject wrote: post #236
eurasiantiger wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then why do nicotine gums and patches work?

That’s like asking why amphetamines help speedball freaks quit opiates.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#246

Post by mixmastamyk »

NoPie wrote: post #56
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…

Equally we have many studies showing that vitamin D helps to reduce risk from covid (hint: it doesn't). More studies show that ivermectin has a positive effect in covid patients. In fact, ivermectin has no effect or has only a very weak effect in certain patients. In medicine observational studies suffer from certain problems that are hard to overcome. The biggest is that the groups are not equal. For example, smoker…

> Vitamin D2 and D3 fills were associated with reductions in COVID-19 infection of 28% and 20%, respectively

- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24053-4

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33648827

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#247

Post by happyopossum »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #81
happyopossum wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sometimes in secret or with no acknowledgement like Trump did Err, that's not even close to factual. Donald Trump touted the vaccines before they were released, got publicly vaccinated, publicly discussed getting his booster shots, and touted their effectiveness in interviews: Example: “Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get (Covid), it’s a very minor form. People aren’t dying when they t…

Donald Trump did not get publically vaccinated: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/us/politics/donald-trump-... He got his booster in secret too: https://theintercept.com/2021/12/21/trump-admits-he-got-vacc... Come back to actual reality please, you're inventing an alternate universe.

Getting “publicly vaccinated “ doesn’t have to mean doing it in front of TV cameras. He said he was going to get it as soon as it was available, he talked about getting it after he did it, and he to this day continues to extol the virtues of those initial vaccines and boosters.
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