Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

spiked-online.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 248 posts

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#81

Post by qbasic_forever »

happyopossum wrote: post #43
qbasic_forever wrote: post #6

If this were actually true we would see elites and politicians constantly smoking, since it would be keeping them safer and they have access to infinite resources, knowledge, etc. Instead we see them getting vaccinated (sometimes in secret or with no acknowledgement like Trump did) and guzzling Paxlovid courses (multiple times like Fauci did) if they do get sick. I'm sticking with the pharmaceutical interventions tha…

> 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.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#82

Post by graeme »

snowwrestler wrote: post #65
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.

Both the original SARS and coronaviruses in general are known to spread via droplets in the air, and from the beginning folks assumed this was one way SARS-COV-2 spread. What was unknown was how long the virus could remain viable after the droplets landed on surfaces. If it is a long time, then mishandling a soiled mask could easily undo any benefit of wearing it. This is the same reason people were washing their gro…

It was apparent very early that there were spread patterns only explainable by aerosols. The Diamond Princess was the earliest publicized example, with cases occurring onboard despite isolation in cabins. Japanese experts understood the lesson immediately and implemented a "three C's" approach to counter airborne spread: avoid close contact, closed spaces, and crowds.

Western governments and experts and the WHO instead took a "lalalala I can't see this" and to this day many still deny airborne transmission and advocate droplet and fomite precautions.

There was not in fact any great mystery about aerosol spread unless you were positively convinced it was impossible. The early tech fact checking was based on this denial, rather than a good faith uncertainty.

Zeynep Tufecki wrote a good article about how airborne spread was resisted: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airbo...

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#84

Post by pclmulqdq »

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…

There is very good evidence that vitamin D in general helps your immune response. It may be that there is a second factor here (another commenter suggested that UVA light was also involved in this process), but the evidence in favor of boosting your immune response by getting sunlight every day is pretty conclusive.

I would be surprised if this study was a vindication of vitamin D, though, rather than a false positive. I think smoking has been shown to generally have negative effects on your overall health (and immune system).

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#85

Post by spurgu »

gopalv wrote: post #64
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…

> 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…

> 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.

Yeah. From what I remember about these studies is that people who used to smoke but don't anymore actually have higher risk of contracting severe Covid. This is easily explained by the fact that many people who quit smoking do so due to health reasons (which in turn are the cause for higher risk of Covid).

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#86

Post by Imnimo »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #72
Imnimo wrote: post #33

I 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.

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.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#87

Post by acdha »

rngname22 wrote: post #59
acdha wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That could definitely explain something like that - basically upgrading some random Reddit moderators to “Big Tech”, and substantially broadening the perceived scope.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#88

Post by drewrv »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #77
drewrv wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My point is that the data is messy. Smokers aren't a randomized subset of the general population.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#89

Post by simplotek »

rngname22 wrote: post #59
acdha wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Anecdata but the more "official" covid subreddits /r/coronavirus and then /r/covid19 brought started off pretty free speech but then began bringing in more and more moderation (...)

Aren't you talking about the growth in conspiracy nuts fabricating all sorts of conspiracy theories and assorted loony claims, such as the infamous "covid is caused by 5G" idiot fest, which were flooding covid-related forums?

Are we now expected to turn a blind eye to all the sadly avoidable deaths that conspiracy nuts and antivaxxers with their bullshit claims brought upon the world in the last couple of years? I mean, countless people ended up queuing veterinarian supply stores to gargle on horse dewormer thanks to these morons. Depicting these loonies as innocent truth-seekers that just asked questions and fought conspiracies is intellectually dishonest.

Re: The great Covid and smoking cover-up?

#90

Post by Izkata »

graeme wrote: post #82
snowwrestler wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the original SARS and coronaviruses in general are known to spread via droplets in the air, and from the beginning folks assumed this was one way SARS-COV-2 spread. What was unknown was how long the virus could remain viable after the droplets landed on surfaces. If it is a long time, then mishandling a soiled mask could easily undo any benefit of wearing it. This is the same reason people were washing their gro…

It was apparent very early that there were spread patterns only explainable by aerosols. The Diamond Princess was the earliest publicized example, with cases occurring onboard despite isolation in cabins. Japanese experts understood the lesson immediately and implemented a "three C's" approach to counter airborne spread: avoid close contact, closed spaces, and crowds. Western governments and experts and the WHO inste…

There's a paywall on nytimes so I can't confirm if it's the same topic, but see also https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...

The screw-up the title refers to is that the medical definition of the droplet/aerosol threshold has been wrong for most of a century, and the source only just tracked down in late 2020/early 2021.

Also buried in there is an interesting tidbit that experts resist aerosol spread in general because it's too similar to the long-discredited miasma theory, so each virus has had to individually be proven in a lab to have aerosol spread before it's acceptable to say so.

Post reply on HN