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The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

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Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#51

Post by acdha »

pessimizer wrote: post #48
acdha wrote: post #22

This story is trying way too hard to be controversial, starting with the incorrect claim that “back then Big Tech’s fact-checkers were still describing claims about SARS-CoV-2 being airborne and face masks preventing infection as ‘misleading’”. His recounting of his personal Google search results is an amusing anecdote but it’s just showing his search history - the same search without a Google cookie turns up a coupl…

> the incorrect claim that “back then Big Tech’s fact-checkers were still describing claims about SARS-CoV-2 being airborne and face masks preventing infection as ‘misleading’”. This is a not an incorrect claim, it is a correct claim.

Do you have any citations? I saw both of those claims being discussed heavily on Twitter and Facebook during that time without those disclaimers so if there was some campaign it appears to have been pretty limited.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#52

Post by FollowingTheDao »

chewmieser wrote: post #5

I think to call it a "cover-up" is a bit silly. One important thing to call out is that former smoker status does seem to result in an increased risk. Only current status MAY be a reduced risk. It seems more study is needed but I'm obviously not as invested in this as the author of this article is.

It’s not silly at all. It doesn’t have to be an intentional cover-up. But the lack of creativity and making a huge profit off of the vaccine is a reality. The only reason the Covid vaccines were given emergency use authorization was because there was no other treatments available. If nicotine was a treatment for Covid, they would not have gotten emergency use authorization.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#53

Post by andai »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #50
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.

News to me - credible link please.

Yeah, it was debunked by ... oh dear god

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#54

Post by LanceH »

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.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#56

Post by NoPie »

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, smokers die younger. Covid risk increases exponentially with age. Consequently, covid will kill more people who have reached greater age as a result of not smoking. The researchers may think that they control for these factors but in reality it is very hard to do.

If you take a random article, it says smokers have greater risks from covid: https://www.renalandurologynews.com/home/departments/mens-he...

Not much evidence in either way, but before we study for reasons how smoking could protect from covid, we would like to know for sure that this is really true.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#58

Post by youngtaff »

josefresco wrote: post #8

I immediately check out whenever someone says "Google it and see what comes up" as "evidence" proving some conspiracy. Also, this is weird hill to die on. This dude has amassed a mega-blog post with a ton of aggregated studies - it's not a small amount of work. Anecdotally my only family member who regularly smokes just got COVID.

> 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

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#59

Post by rngname22 »

acdha wrote: post #51
pessimizer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the incorrect claim that “back then Big Tech’s fact-checkers were still describing claims about SARS-CoV-2 being airborne and face masks preventing infection as ‘misleading’”. This is a not an incorrect claim, it is a correct claim.

Do you have any citations? I saw both of those claims being discussed heavily on Twitter and Facebook during that time without those disclaimers so if there was some campaign it appears to have been pretty limited.

Anecdata but the more "official" covid subreddits /r/coronavirus and then /r/covid19 started off pretty free speech but then began bringing in more and more moderation and allowing less divergence from agreed upon narrative, if parent poster is a heavy Reddit user perhaps that is where their feelings come from.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#60

Post by jscipione »

Not only was this study covered up, a Pfizer commercial aired that recommends oral treatment for high risk groups including smokers without disclosure of potential side-effects or a list of studies that confirm the claims of the ad. I’n not sure what loophole makes this legal but maybe it is because the actual drug name is not spoken and that allows Pfizer to advertise without listing the side effects by saying “ask your doctor if an oral treatment is right for you?”
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