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The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
71–80 of 248 posts
Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
#72I clicked on the first study in the linked blog post. Here is what it says: >We found that active smoking was associated with lower odds of having a positive test result. There are several plausible reasons for this result. Active smoking might affect nasopharyngeal viral load and therefore affect RT-PCR test sensitivity, rather than protecting against actual infection, although this effect is not known to occur with…
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.
Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
#73Author 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…
> 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.
Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
#74Author 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…
We have many studies showing that hypovitaminosis D is correlated with the risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms. What's not clear is whether there is a direct causative relationship, or if higher blood vitamin D levels are just a proxy for other generally healthy lifestyle factors.
Some studies have shown a protective effect from vitamin D supplementation and others have not. The general flaw in most of those studies has been that they gave all of the study patients the same dosage instead of titrating the dosage to hit a target blood level. There are huge variations between individuals based on sunlight exposure, diet, genetics, and other pathologies so the data is really noisy.
Before making any claims in this area I recommend reading through at least the abstracts of all studies indexed on this page. It's a complex area and we have no definitive conclusions yet.
Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
#75I'm guessing it's more difficult to contract a respiratory illness if your lungs are already damaged, malfunctioning, and covered in tar.
Plus, smokers are not exactly the pinnacle of health. They would be less likely to voluntarily test for COVID and would be less concerned with coughing and wheezing, since those are more normal occurrences.
Smokers are also more likely to be in the same political mindset as people who would ignore or lie about positive test results, intentionally do a bad job of testing, etc.
Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
#76On the balance, aren't the risks still heavily against smoking?
So what's the point of promoting one benefit of smoking when you still want to advise everyone to stop or never start smoking?
This article suggests a coverup, but as the author points out, there's no shortage of science showing that smoking is associated with a lower chance of getting Covid. The author is really complaining about the interpretations and conclusions... but those are right: people should still not smoke. So all he's actually complaining about is the lack of nuance in the expression of the conclusions. I don't disagree with that -- bad writing about the meaning of scientific studies is very common -- but at least in this case the overall conclusion is still correct.
I wouldn't take this one to the mat. You're just going to end up convincing certain people to start smoking and any larger point about the poor state of scientific reporting is going to be muddied by the political partisans.
Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
#77This 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 actual reason is probably unrelated to the act of smoking. Smokers are different than the general population in a number of ways - Smokers are addicted to an appetite suppressant and are skinnier than the general population. Since obesity is linked to poor covid outcomes that could play a role. - I'd guess that smokers are younger on average since, grimly, they don't make it into old age as often (or they quit).…
Isn't this not actually what the user you are responding to was saying? Smokers have worse outcomes, but they seem to get it less. All of your points address better outcomes, with the exception of the outdoors bit.
Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
#78To me the interesting smoking related issue is obesity & related problems. Most of the world has all put a lot of weight on in the last few decades. Is it a coincidence that is while we've given up smoking? Cigarettes actively reduce hunger and desire for eating.
Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
#79I 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.
50% less risk doesn't mean invincible. ;)
My anecdotal contribution is that my fiancée (who smokes) didn't catch it from me, even though we spent all days together throughout (me working from home, she not working at all) when I caught Covid 8 months after my 2nd (and last) jab.
Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
#80Author 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…
After being given this information, a reasonable person would conclude that while smoking might decrease their risk of getting COVID, starting a smoking habit (possibly leading to addiction) would mean likely worse health outcomes than just accepting the risk of getting COVID (which can be lowered significantly through much safer means).
Unfortunately, there are lot of unreasonable people out there. I would not be surprised if a ton of people, if they were to hear the WHO or CDC agree that smoking reduces the risk of COVID infection, would start smoking, and get addicted. Some of those who were already addicted and were trying to quit would decide to stop trying.
The issue is that this information seems to have been suppressed, censored, and outright lied about by authorities. Now, on one hand, I get it: organizations like the WHO and CDC are not only interested in the raw outcomes of trials and research, but are also responsible for influencing public health policy. I think it's pretty safe to say that telling people smoking helps protect from COVID would be against public health goals.
I honestly don't know where I stand on this. I think I'm fine with orgs like the WHO and CDC deliberately not making recommendations on, or being silent about, things that they don't believe are healthy to encourage. But outright lying, denying the results of trials that do prove a correlation, crosses the line for me.