[HN Gopher] The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
___________________________________________________________________
The great Covid and smoking cover-up?
Author : commons-tragedy
Score : 148 points
Date : 2022-12-05 18:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spiked-online.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spiked-online.com)
| chewmieser wrote:
| 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.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| I agree that "cover-up" is baity and therefore we should edit
| the title (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "
| _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
| linkbait_ ").
|
| However, I can't think of a good way to fit HN's 80 char limit
| without changing the meaning. The title needs to include both
| the author's claim about what the studies show, and the
| author's claim that this finding has been dismissed or
| suppressed or overlooked (pick a neutral word) because of its
| nonconformity.
|
| I've put a question mark up there for the time being.
| blindriver wrote:
| I distinctly remember this fact very early on in 2020 and thought
| it was pretty interesting. I am actually shocked that this
| inconvenient truth has been completely buried.
| bartc wrote:
| I'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.
| noelsusman wrote:
| This thread will surely devolve into a general repository for
| COVID contrarian angst, but the broader point in this article is
| an interesting one. I would summarize it by saying there's an
| asymmetry in evidence demanded for a claim based on whether or
| not it agrees with the conclusion obtained by reasoning from
| first principles.
|
| The author seems to be saying that rigorous, peer-reviewed,
| observational studies should be the end of the discussion, or at
| least the starting point. I'm not sure I agree. Given the
| significant limitations present in all medical studies like this,
| I think it could make some sense to give a lot more weight to the
| conclusion reached through a fundamental understanding of how the
| human body works. Some hesitancy to overturn that conclusion
| based on a handful of inevitably flawed studies seems prudent to
| me, or at least not crazy.
|
| I'm reminded of the current tensions around "evidence-based
| practice" where medicine is transformed into essentially
| flowcharts that get continuously updated according to peer-
| reviewed research. It sounds like a good idea, but it's been
| somewhat controversial since that's not how medicine has
| traditionally been practiced. It significantly reduces a doctor's
| ability to problem solve through reasoning, which has some
| benefits but also some clear downsides as well.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| The data is the data.
|
| If the data that agrees with you is "good data", and the data
| that disagrees with you "needs to reach a higher standard",
| that is how inaccurate beliefs get entrenched.
| Majromax wrote:
| That's just Bayesian reasoning.
|
| If you told me that you saw the sun rise in the east this
| morning, I'd probably believe you.
|
| If you told me that you saw the sun rise in the north this
| morning, I'd probably not believe you.
|
| In both cases, "the data is the data," and all I have is your
| report. However, given a strong prior probability based on
| personal experience and first-principles reasoning, in the
| second case above I'm still more likely to think you mistaken
| than the conventional cosmological model wrong.
| akimball wrote:
| Since the interactions of ACE2 and nicotine are well-known, my
| priors favor the benefit of nicotine in this pandemic. They
| remain neutral, consequently, with regard to smoking, because
| while smoking does deliver nicotine, it also does lung damage
| with heat and particulates, and delivers carcinogenic and
| oxidative creosotes.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Ignore the data and what we are seeing and move back into a
| more basic incorrect model we feel safe in? The world isn't
| flat even though it maybe politically incorrect to tell the
| church this. The downsides here are political.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| 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 that the elites seem to
| love...
| happyopossum wrote:
| > 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 take the vaccine," he said in an interview with
| The Daily Wire's Candace Owens that was released Tuesday.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| 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.
| johnnyo wrote:
| It's possible that (A) smokers are less likely to get Covid AND
| ALSO that (B) taking up smoking still has more downsides,
| making it not recommendable as an actual treatment.
|
| Just because A is true doesn't mean it follows smoking is a
| useful or recommended treatment. But it might lead to insights
| that drive future treatments.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| In reality there is no well-informed, well-coordinated elite
| that creates conspiracies. That's not house information gets
| suppressed. It's some individuals feeling, often implicit,
| cultural pressure not to give too much attention to something.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > If this were actually true we would see elites and
| politicians constantly smoking
|
| We'd only see that if the cumulative risk from smoking and
| maybe-covid was greater than the cumulative risk from
| vaccination and maybe-covid, and if the marginal risk from
| vaccination if one were already a smoker was negative.
|
| As is, I expect this is true, but that the harms of smoking
| outweigh the decreased risk of covid by quite a lot, so this
| isn't actionable at the individual level, though it may be
| actionable for research into biological pathways.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| > have access to infinite resources, knowledge, etc.
|
| I find the pervasiveness of this idea fascinating since it
| usually falls apart on backtesting. There are tons of elites
| who get taken in by Ponzi schemes (just look at Madoffs client
| list), lots of very well connected people lost a ton of money
| in 08, lots of celebrities use Goop products, etc.
|
| Are there counter examples? I have not found much evidence that
| there's some secret elites-only repository of knowledge.
| vagabund wrote:
| Completely anecdotal, but I got Covid ~2 weeks after quitting
| smoking (3 or 4 cigarettes a day), having had avoided it for
| months. Essentially everyone I know, save my brother who smokes
| heavily, has gotten it.
| lifewallet_dev wrote:
| Yeah I never got it... I was careful but never as careful as
| anybody else. In fact subpar care for many...
| josefresco wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| Yes, and I've so far gone through the initial double dose
| vaccination, a booster a year ago, and the new bivalent vaccine
| this fall. But I've still had COVID at least once (possibly
| twice) since my first vaccination.
|
| Do I think the vaccine did nothing? Of course not. Just as
| someone who agrees with the smoking-protects-against-COVID
| research probably wouldn't think smoking did nothing, even if
| they eventually got infected.
|
| The studies didn't say smoking made it impossible to get COVID,
| just that it reduces the likelihood. Just like the vaccines
| won't 100% prevent it.
| spurgu wrote:
| > Anecdotally my only family member who regularly smokes just
| got COVID.
|
| 50% less risk doesn't mean invincible. ;)
|
| My anecdotal contribution is that my fiancee (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.
| notahacker wrote:
| The author has spent his entire career attacking anti-smoking
| campaigns both as an author and the reason why the Institute
| for Economic Affairs was Big Tobacco's favourite think tank, so
| assembling this sort of list of "evidence" is par for the
| course for him.
|
| Back in the day when "long COVID" was an unknown phenomenon and
| vaccines a dim and distant dream, the medical profession had
| already spotted the interesting correlation and started
| nicotine supplement trials (anecdotally, my very non-scientific
| experiment with nicotine patches for lagging symptoms showed no
| evident effect). It's possible there's been a massive coverup,
| but it's also possible the health professionals reasoning just
| wasn't as highly motivated to see success in these trials and
| an absence of confounding data as Christopher Snowdon...
| thenerdhead wrote:
| 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+
| notahacker wrote:
| A few days, on the assumption that my body was taking too
| long to fight off the infection in which case the
| hypothesized property of inhibiting virus replication via
| ACE2 pathways might actually have been useful. Came to the
| conclusion that lingering symptoms were more post-viral
| stuff (as I said, only just starting to be recorded with
| respect to COVID at the time) so the nicotine was utterly
| pointless.
|
| A slight nicotine buzz is hardly a huge acclimatisation
| (which was sort of the point of thinking it was low-risk to
| try) and I didn't exactly _want_ to get used to it enough
| develop a dependency on it!
| aradox66 wrote:
| 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...
| Izkata wrote:
| > Back in the day when "long COVID" was an unknown phenomenon
|
| It's rebranded post-viral syndrome/fatigue, there's nothing
| new about it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| More info on these corporate propagandists for hire:
|
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs
|
| > Naturally, it is supportive of tobacco companies, given
| that they have been quite charitable to the institute. (This
| includes funding some of Roger Scruton's pro-tobacco
| publications.)[25] Being that it received funding from BP
| oil, it is no wonder that it also engaged in climate
| denialism: in 2019 The Guardian said the IEA had "published
| at least four books, as well as multiple articles and papers,
| over two decades suggesting manmade climate change may be
| uncertain or exaggerated".[26][27]
|
| > t complained to media regulator Ofcom when radio presenter
| James O'Brien (hardly a Marxist firebrand) characterised it
| as a "hard-right lobby group for vested interests of big
| business, fossil fuels, tobacco, junk food" in 2019.[1] He
| also called an IEA spokesperson "some Herbert" and stated the
| IEA was of "questionable provenance, with dubious ideas and
| validity" and funded by "dark money". Ofcom judged that
| nothing O'Brien said was a distortion of the facts, and he
| had offered them a right of reply; the IEA's complaint was
| rejected.[28]
| Izkata wrote:
| > Anecdotally my only family member who regularly smokes just
| got COVID.
|
| Took nearly 3 years, that's pretty good ;)
| brewdad wrote:
| They didn't say whether it was their first time getting
| COVID.
| detaro wrote:
| Also googling the topic I find plenty "news" articles basically
| saying what the meta-analysis they reference also says, from
| later than 2020 which according to the authro was the only time
| this possibility was acknowledged. Somehow that's basically
| always the case if someone claims that something wasn't
| reported. (But I'm sure the author would find reasons to
| discount that reporting because it's not as unequivocally
| positive as they think the topic is or ...)
| youngtaff wrote:
| > 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
| standardUser wrote:
| "I've never had Covid either"
|
| That you know of. Like many infections, not everyone develops
| symptoms.
| jmull wrote:
| On 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.
| mertd wrote:
| I don't understand what's being covered up. Sure it is an
| interesting phenomenon but purely from an academic perspective.
| It's not like smoking became a net positive for health. It's
| literally the definition of non news.
| orangecat wrote:
| _On the balance, aren 't the risks still heavily against
| smoking?_
|
| Yes.
|
| _So what 's the point of promoting one benefit of smoking when
| you still want to advise everyone to stop or never start
| smoking?_
|
| The first point is honesty, and that should be sufficient on
| its own. But even ignoring that, the obvious next step is to
| figure out the mechanism by which smoking inhibits Covid, which
| may lead to better vaccines or treatments.
| jmull wrote:
| > ...honesty...
|
| I agree honesty is good. But the author published an article
| "Smoke [cigarettes], save lives", which leads with a fat lie,
| so we're not getting it here.
|
| > ...the obvious next step is to figure out the mechanism by
| which smoking inhibits Covid...
|
| Of course. But that's separate from the media the author is
| complaining about.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _So all he 's actually complaining about is the lack of
| nuance in the expression of the conclusions._
|
| That's not what happened, though. The article claims that
| public health authorities, as well as random doctors, were
| denouncing these studies, and were claiming that they were a
| myth. Not just that they disagreed with conclusions. (And even
| then, merely disagreeing with conclusions sounds pretty
| dishonest.)
|
| I think it's fair to say something like: "Yes, some researchers
| have drawn conclusions that smoking can help protect you from
| COVID infection. However, the health risks associated with
| smoking can be much worse than a COVID infection, and there are
| many other ways you can safely reduce your risk of COVID
| infection."
|
| But instead, they said: "Research? Yeah, that research is
| garbage and the people involved are completely wrong." If the
| article here is to be believed, that's a flat-out lie.
|
| > _You 're just going to end up convincing certain people to
| start smoking_
|
| I get it, but I think the cat was already out of that bag. I'm
| sure some people _did_ start smoking based on these studies,
| regardless of what public health orgs said. And yes, maybe more
| people might have done the same if they 'd acknowledged the
| potential correctness of the studies, but still urged people
| not to smoke. But I think that's an outcome we just have to
| accept; lying about scientific evidence hurts the credibility
| of these organizations in a way much worse than a possible
| increase of smoking-related health problems. And, personally,
| if I was in on one of those decision-making meetings, I
| wouldn't be comfortable lying to the public in that way. I
| would hope I'd have the stones to resign rather than do that.
| srj wrote:
| There are random bits of correlation everywhere and investigating
| whether there's an underlying causative reason is laborious. It's
| no surprise then that not every one gets looked at, and people
| pick what is most likely to yield an interesting result.
|
| In this case IMO it'd be quite surprising if smoking actually
| impeded any virus. I don't think it's a conspiracy that this
| isn't getting attention.
|
| Other commenters have listed some possible confounding variables
| here, but the first one that popped into my mind is that people
| who know they have a higher risk from past smoking are more
| likely to be cautious and not get exposed. This is true for one
| of my relatives with COPD who was very careful to not get it
| before vaccines were available.
| jscipione wrote:
| 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?"
| rvba wrote:
| First of all, I didnt really deep dive into it, if those 87
| studies really exist.
|
| Some ideas:
|
| 1) Smokers go outside more and have more vitamin D which helps
| against covid?
|
| 2) smokers are on average less obese than non smokers? A lot of
| people smoke in order to cut hunger
|
| 3) breaks? To be honest sometimes I wish I smoked
|
| 4) fresh air?
|
| 5) some sort of mechanism that of the lungs can repair themselves
| after smoking it also stops the virus?
|
| 6) something inside the cigarettes stopping the virus?
|
| The article mentions how smokers reacted better when given
| nicotine patches, bur doesnt this just mean that their bodies
| didnt have to fight "two" things at the same time: covid and
| nicotine withdrawal?
|
| On a side note, were there any real studies if those who died of
| covid didnt have a co infecfion with something else? Reports that
| said that in some countries various drugs would work, sounded a
| bit like each country had their own co infecrions treated by that
| particular drug.
| rr888 wrote:
| To 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.
| benevol wrote:
| There's another "hack": Skip the injections, which saves your
| immune system.
| askiiart wrote:
| [Snopes](https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/05/07/does-nicotine-
| protect...) - from 2020, but unbiased, at least
|
| > The researchers have proposed nicotine attaches to the ACE2
| receptors, thereby preventing the virus from attaching and
| potentially reducing the amount of virus that can get into a
| person's lung cells.
|
| As for potential bias: > Further, around 60% of the hospitalised
| patients in the study were ex-smokers (similar to the national
| prevalence). Some may have given up smoking very recently in
| response to the WHO declaring smoking as a risk factor for
| COVID-19. But they were classified as non-daily smokers in the
| study. > Second is what we call "social desirability bias".
| COVID-19 patients may be more likely to deny smoking when asked
| about their smoking status in hospital, wanting to be seen by
| medical professionals as doing the right thing.
|
| *Keep in mind this snopes article is referencing _one_ study from
| mid-2020, and may not be accurate*
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >but unbiased, at least
|
| It's Snopes. No such thing. They sold their credibility for a
| mess of money and political activism. No refunds.
| mikem170 wrote:
| > They sold their credibility for a mess of money and
| political activism
|
| Can you provide any additional details, references, and/or
| specific examples?
|
| I haven't used snopes in a long while, but was impressed at
| the time, particularly that they always sited references,
| exploring both sides of an issue. I always came away feeling
| better informed. But I'm open to changing my opinion if there
| is justification to do so.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| News to me - credible link please.
| andai wrote:
| Yeah, it was debunked by ... oh dear god
| grumple wrote:
| Found an interesting study about the ACE2 receptors and
| nicotine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7942220/
|
| Suggest nicotine increases the expression of these receptors
| and makes covid spread more in vitro. This doesn't really jive
| with the studies of human population, I guess. It does suggest
| something weird here.
| tromp wrote:
| Smoking could be effective at making other people (like myself)
| apply social distancing to avoid the stench...
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| 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 to its own dogmas.
|
| In theory, the scientific method should resolve that. But in
| practice, scientists (including the medical community) are just
| as apt as anyone to want to confirm their biases and dismiss
| difficult evidence.
|
| I also think when it comes to anything involving public policy,
| things can quickly devolve to no longer being about scientific
| inquiry but rather about supporting or attacking positions.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the author just wants everyone to start
| smoking and stop listening to their doctors. But that's not how
| it came across to me.
|
| I think it's more a call for critical thinking and fairness. Just
| because an issue has been politicized, doesn't mean we should
| pick a side.
|
| For what it's worth, I'm opposed to smoking and and supportive of
| vaccines. But if the day comes where there is strong evidence to
| suggest switching positions on that, I'd like to think I'll be
| open minded enough to do so.
|
| Final point, briefly touched on in the article: Nicotine deserves
| more research. Almost all research on nicotine is in terms of
| smoking tobacco. Nicotine on its own could very well prove to be
| an important medical drug.
|
| Same for all drugs... THC, CBD, whatever the active substance in
| cocaine and heroin are. They should all be studies rigorously and
| without moral judgment.
| oblib wrote:
| You did a great job of summing up what I felt after reading the
| article and then reading comments here. I've lived long enough
| to see things that folks have pointed out get scorched by
| naysayers and later confirmed to be true.
|
| One example that's stuck with me over the years is where
| Monarch Butterflies spend the winter. When I was growing up we
| were told "No one knows", and that was true. Then, in the
| 1970s, some guy and his girlfriend, who were not scientists,
| (Kenneth C. Brugger & Catalina Aguado) announced they'd found
| out where they migrate, high up in the mountains in Mexico, and
| they were immediately trashed by "professionals" who were
| quoted in the "News".
|
| At time it seemed very odd to me that they were so quickly and
| harshly dismissed by the "experts" who hadn't been able to find
| or confirm where they went.
|
| I prefer to keep an open mind, and in this case it's not a huge
| leap for me to believe there may be something to this. I
| wouldn't recommend folks start smoking tobacco but it's worth
| more study.
|
| There is still vastly more that we don't know than we do know
| about biology here on earth and that will be the case for at
| least a very long time and quite possibly, and most likely, our
| entire human existence.
| juve1996 wrote:
| For every random "expert" who is right there are likely
| millions of wrong ones.
|
| In tech terms, it's like the "idea" guy. We need to have some
| level of curation, that yes, will be wrong at singular time
| points. The point of a process is continual improvement, not
| being perfect at every singular point in time.
| juve1996 wrote:
| > 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) are just
| as apt as anyone to want to confirm their biases and dismiss
| difficult evidence.
|
| Over time the scientific method works. People change. Facts
| don't. Evidence accumulates, and opinions are changed.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| 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
| smokers: it's certainly worse to be a smoker than not if you _do_
| catch the Covid.
|
| Smoking also has some other bad health effects. I feel like
| that's pretty well-understood these days. I know these things; I
| was a smoker; I still am a smoker. I would not recommend taking
| up a cigarette habit just because of the Covid. Doesn't seem to
| cut down on the risk of dying from the Covid, still increases the
| risks of having bad health effects from everything else that's
| harmful about smoking.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > on his web log
|
| Also called blog, since ~20 years.
| ipaddr wrote:
| blog? That word is so last year. That's an extented tweet or
| non-visual tiktok movie.
| enneff wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't
| cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer,
| including at the rest of the community. Edit out swipes.
| bena wrote:
| Also, I'd imagine the people who were smoking when COVID
| started being a thing were smokers well before then.
|
| So whatever factors make smokers less likely to contract COVID
| may be because of some of the long term effects of smoking. So
| picking up smoking isn't necessarily going to make you
| immediately safer.
| 2devnull wrote:
| People just stand farther away from smokers, even outdoors.
| Because smokers stink. And if your having trouble breathing
| cause of the Covid, you will go to even greater lengths to not
| get close to smokers.
|
| But also, people with chronic respiratory problems, ie pretty
| much all smokers, you won't notice you have mild Covid.
| Everyday of being a smoker is like having mild Covid, so less
| likely to get tested etc.
|
| Lastly smokers are _on average_ lower IQ, lower SES, etc. very
| hard to control for that health research. I think we do know
| that lower SES communities were less likely to seek health care
| including vaccines and testing.
| gopalv wrote:
| > 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, you get a more
| discriminatory result from the study. The real problem of
| course is that confounding factors are almost fractal in
| nature.
|
| On the other hand, if you had a comparison saying "Smokers
| replace their mucus linings more frequently than non-smokers,
| expectorating the virus with it", then that I would buy as a
| causation. Coughing up phlegm does offer a direct means of
| explaining a reduced exposure.
|
| > I would not recommend taking up a cigarette habit just
| because of the Covid
|
| So there's a weird thing that happens when news about a new
| improvement in life comes up.
|
| A study gets published "people who eat dark chocolate live
| longer", but then a bunch of relatively unhealthy but
| optimistic people actively choose to eat dark chocolate or
| drink red wine or whatever new superfood, but fail to live
| longer as a result. Mostly because they just made that one
| change, plus there are now a thousand more manufacturers of the
| same product (say Manuka honey), with varying fades of quality
| as time goes on.
|
| So a change in human behaviour is triggered by a study both for
| consumption and production, which ends up proving that the
| original study modified the circumstances in which it was
| originally true. And we are in the quest for a better causation
| of the original observation.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _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-drinkers" includes a lot of people who
| can't drink because they're already sick or because they're
| alcoholics and drug addicts with long histories of abuse (and
| so on).
|
| Once you control for that group non-drinkers do better than
| moderate drinkers.
| spurgu wrote:
| > 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).
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| 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.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| > There is no such thing as a confounding factor for a
| correlation.
|
| Sure there is.
|
| As an example, let's say there's a positive correlation
| between the dose of some antidepressant and the probability
| of suicide. There could be a confounding variable with
| respect to the severity of depression in those samples such
| that people with more severe depression are more likely to
| take larger doses _and_ more likely to commit suicide. The
| original correlation may not necessarily be between the
| dose of the antidepressant and the probability of suicide,
| but rather the severity of the depression and the
| probability of suicide. In other words, the correlation
| could be a correlation of the wrong thing because you didn
| 't control for depression severity.
|
| It does not matter _only_ for causality, but _also_ for
| correlation. In both cases, it 's important to control for
| confounding variables so that you're measuring and
| analyzing the actual variable(s) that you're trying to, not
| some other variable(s) (i.e., confounding) indirectly.
| Otherwise, it may no longer be a relationship, whether
| causal or correlative, of the thing you think it is, but of
| some other thing.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| brookst wrote:
| Agree, with the nuance that I think the psychology at WHO /
| CDC / etc is probably focused on existing smokers who may
| choose not to (try to) quit because of data like this ("WHO
| says I should keep smoking!")
|
| But there are going to be misinterpretations and bad outcomes
| no matter what. So I'd err on the side of honesty and
| integrity, and perhaps trying to mitigate harm by producing
| data on, say, life expectancies for smokers who quit today
| versus those who don't, and (presumably) the data that says
| it's still way better to quit. And if the data doesn't
| support that, well, data is data.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I think the most likely outcome is for a certain subset of
| the population to think "I don't need to get vaccinated, I
| smoke cigarettes."
| ipaddr wrote:
| And they would have been right.
| WhackyIdeas wrote:
| 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...
| akimball wrote:
| 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.
| hiimkeks wrote:
| No they wouldn't. Smoking gives a little protection
| against infection, but once you have it it's likely much
| worse. Vaccines give you a little protection against
| infection and also reduce the probability of severe
| courses of illness.
| ipaddr wrote:
| 50-68% more protection which is better than the vaccine.
| And it did provide better outcomes when patients were
| treated with patches in the hospital.
| lstodd wrote:
| One doesn't actually need to smoke cigarettes -- mixing my own
| vape juice (no flavours, tuned pg/vg and nicotine levels no one
| dictates) works just fine.
|
| Edit: in any case rolling tobacco is way better than any
| cigarette one can buy (not to mention 36mg Indonesian
| killsticks)
| mmmpop wrote:
| The editorializing on "smoking is bad" is moot--we all know it
| and it's not the point.
| NoPie wrote:
| 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.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > Equally we have many studies showing that vitamin D helps
| to reduce risk from covid (hint: it doesn't).
|
| But we know the reason for this; in order to get the
| circulatory and anti-viral benefits of vitamin D, you need to
| be exposed to a sufficient amount of UVA. But most folks who
| are getting a sufficient amount of UVA are also getting
| enough UVB to make enough vitamin D in the first place, which
| is what always causes the outcomes of the studies to look
| equivocal. It's really not that complicated, but researchers
| keep running fake studies to scam money out of the government
| and make pharma drugs look more effective by comparison.
| jumanjijumanji wrote:
| I'm sure I'm just misunderstanding, but I don't follow the
| explanation. What do UVA and UVB have to do with this, and
| why does that lead to weird results?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| 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).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > generally have negative effects on your overall health
|
| smoking tobacco for years, every day, definitely changes
| your body. Most of those effects are not great in the long
| run, yet many people start and continue to smoke cigarettes
| for years on end. The change to lung tissue, mucus
| membranes, tongue, mouth ecosystem.. are real.. and for an
| otherwise healthy person, yes, they have to get "tougher".
| NoPie wrote:
| Vitamin D is obviously necessary, mostly for bone health,
| but any study of supplementing it for other purposes to
| people without any symptoms of deficiency have been
| disappointing.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > Equally we have many studies showing that vitamin D helps
| to reduce risk from covid (hint: it doesn't).
|
| How so?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| It's easy to be confidently wrong with statistics.
|
| Ivermectin improves outcomes in a hospital setting... but
| only in developing nations.
|
| There's _two_ confounding effects there! One, you have to be
| sick enough to be treated in hospital and two, living in a
| place with high levels of endemic parasite infections.
|
| Ivermectin treats parasites. Parasites are _helped_ by the
| steroids given for severe infections. Treating the parasite
| infections does -- demonstrably -- help outcomes, but not
| uniformly. It 's not a prophylactic and it won't do much of
| anything in developed nations where less than 1% of the
| population has parasites.
|
| I noticed just how _bad_ these studies were when I took
| Tamiflu for the worst flu I had ever had. I went from crying
| in pain to "this feels like a mild sniffle" in less than 12
| hours, the fastest I had ever experienced flu symptoms
| subsiding.
|
| My doctor recommended against taking Tamiful because it was
| expensive (not really) and that studies showed that its
| effects were marginal, something like reducing the duration
| of symptoms by a mere 1/2 a day out of 2-3 weeks.
|
| Reducing the duration... reducing the _duration_. You see,
| there 's no objective method for measuring symptom _severity_
| , so during studies of new medications, they _don 't._ They
| measure duration. But duration is very difficult to reduce,
| because of the way the learning process of the immune system
| works. There's a bunch of sequential processes that occur
| sequentially.
|
| Tamiflu reduces symptom severity but not duration. So
| apparently it's "worthless", because it improves only
| outcomes that aren't measured.
|
| Whether you're crying in pain or not is apparently not
| objective enough...
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| Have we seen studies from India, Peru and a few other
| countries, japan as well I believe, on ivermectin?
| jumanjijumanji wrote:
| > But duration is very difficult to reduce, because of the
| way the learning process of the immune system works.
| There's a bunch of sequential processes that occur
| sequentially.
|
| I'm genuinely very curious for more detail about this. Can
| you describe what some of the processes are (or better,
| where I can go to learn about it)?
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > Tamiflu reduces symptom severity but not duration. So
| apparently it's "worthless", because it improves only
| outcomes that aren't measured.
|
| To be fair, that's not really "being confidently wrong with
| statistics" so much as "being confidently wrong by ignoring
| all of the statistics that are inconvenient to collect".
| outworlder wrote:
| > Ivermectin improves outcomes in a hospital setting... but
| only in developing nations.
|
| Precisely. The only studies I could find that were well
| done and did show correlation were in developing nations.
| Turns out that having parasites + a severe viral infection
| can be bad for you.
|
| However, most intestinal parasites are cleared with a much
| lighter regimen that many ivermectin advocates were
| suggesting, some with megadoses that are harmful to the
| liver. There are other dewormers that are much better -
| some are even single dose.
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/
| hooverd wrote:
| I wonder if people with higher vitamin D levels are more
| likely to touch grass. It's good for your immune system to
| go outside.
| xphilter wrote:
| 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).
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| This is such a horribly immature statement to make. There are
| many chemicals in cigarettes that can be utilized to either
| prevent or understand how Covid infects the human body, and
| what we can do to stop it. The nicotonic receptors are highly
| utilized by the immune system.
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11062-007-0037-2
|
| I'm really getting tired of this lack of creative thought in
| thinking about health and disease.
| dang wrote:
| Please make your substantive points without swipes. This is
| in the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Edit: we've had to ask you this several times already:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33568920 (Nov 2022)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31632010 (June 2022)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31239687 (May 2022)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30570715 (March 2022)
|
| If you continue doing this we're going to have to ban you. If
| you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules, we'd appreciate it.
| Something1234 wrote:
| Izkata wrote:
| The next step would be to figure out why and if it can be
| duplicated without the negative effects.
| LanceH wrote:
| > 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.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Gotta love reality. Always messing with the humans that _need_
| things to be a certain way.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Does anyone else find this baffling as an avenue of exploration
| to begin with?
|
| The health impacts of a 30 year old healthy male smoking tobacco
| massively outweigh what coronavirus would do to them in 99.9
| percent of cases, likely higher.
|
| It feels a bit like saying you could reduce your chance of toe
| cancer by amputating your toe. Theoretically sure, if you're
| already in a wheelchair, why not, no toes required.
|
| But that's a niche line of enquiry.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Though you are right, this doesn't mean that it's not an
| interesting avenue of investigation by which we could learn
| something important about the disease.
| saalweachter wrote:
| > It feels a bit like saying you could reduce your chance of
| toe cancer by amputating your toe.
|
| Not disagreeing with your actual point, but we do actually
| sometimes opt to remove body parts if the cancer risk is high
| enough, because cancer metastasizes.
|
| So in the hypothetical toe-cancer case, you might go from a X0%
| chance of developing toe cancer with a Y0% chance of it
| metastasizing to a 0% chance, which might be worth losing a toe
| over.
| addingadimensio wrote:
| covid infections per year vs x cigarettes per year? Clear as
| mud.
| tlhunter wrote:
| > would have been enough to alarm Zuckerberg's minions
|
| If you're not going to write the article seriously, I'm not going
| to the article read seriously.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Probably not the article to comment on then.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| TLDR: Author isn't a doctor but googled some stuff and loves to
| play a rebel.
| intrasight wrote:
| Replace "smoking" with "body odor" in that article, and it will
| still make as much sense:
|
| "Having body odor to ward off a respiratory disease does seem
| counterintuitive, I will grant you, and alternative explanations
| have been put forward."
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Based on the smokers I know, I wonder if it is because smokers,
| by and large, have been banished to the outdoors. They're much
| more likely to sit outside at restaurants, they frequently go
| outside for smoke breaks, they tend not to go places that are
| overly restrictive of smokers and thus less likely to be around
| larger groups of people.
| DanAtC wrote:
| This publication is bordering on garbage
| https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/spiked-magazine/
| fleddr wrote:
| As is your comment.
|
| First, if it is biased, it should be trivially easy for you to
| refute the points made by the author.
|
| Second, a biased publication does not make a biased article.
| I'm sure that when a far-right publication publishes a weather
| report, it's not optimized for "conservative views".
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| I'm wondering and pondering, when they'll get up to speed,
| investigating smoking first-class weed? Not the street shit from
| town, but lovingly grown from best seeds, satisfying all needs.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| What's so terrible about a positive correlation or even
| causality? Here's another one I just made up that's probably
| true: Morbidly obese people have a much lower rate of dying from
| bicycle accidents. That can be true without needing a coverup
| conspiracy.
| psychphysic wrote:
| This is neat I'll have to dig into it.
|
| I love this kind of inconvenient result.
|
| That said. Why was ivermectin and hydroxy-chloroquinine promoted
| so aggressively and successfully but not smoking?
|
| That's similar to if the moon landing was fake why didn't the
| Soviets point it out?
|
| I believe asthmatics were also not as negatively affected as
| initially expected. That was put down to them being more likely
| to shield and use of steroid inhaler. Maybe tar is good for the
| lungs?
|
| That systematically reviewing a large body of evidence is tough
| and it's not clear the author has the chops for that. You don't
| just do a head count or just add it all up. He makes no mention
| of publication bias (does he know how to look for it?). He
| dismissed explanations without reason (the very same thing he
| accuses "they" or doing.).
| vintermann wrote:
| Isn't this a classic example of collider bias?
| EMM_386 wrote:
| There's a good chance this comes down to nicotine.
|
| > Biological mechanisms exist to explain why smoking could
| protect from SARS-CoV-2 infection. I don't pretend to be
| qualified to assess them, but the basic idea is that nicotine
| competes with the virus for the ACE2 receptor. The few studies
| looking at vaping have produced mixed results, but an intriguing
| study from the US found that Covid-19 patients who are smokers
| had better outcomes in hospital when given nicotine patches.
| acdha wrote:
| 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 couple of recent peer-reviewed studies
| which found smokers had higher risks of complications from
| infections.
|
| The actual topic is more interesting than the framing: it's been
| observed since pretty early on and covered in both conventional
| and social media but there wasn't a firm explanation, and nobody
| sane was going to recommend taking up smoking as a preventative
| measure so it's unclear what other coverage the author expected.
| drewrv wrote:
| 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). Age is also
| linked to poor covid outcomes. - Smokers spend more time
| outdoors and are more likely to sit outdoors at
| restaurants/bars.
|
| It's definitely an interesting statistical effect but I don't
| think there's any actionable information in the correlation.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| 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.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Smokers who took nicotine during recovery, recovered
| quicker.
| drewrv wrote:
| My point is that the data is messy. Smokers aren't a
| randomized subset of the general population.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 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.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| You just made a claim, about a claim, about a claim, about a
| claim.
|
| My claim is that it is getting too deep.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| 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 groceries and mail. We now know that is spreads very
| poorly this way, so we wear masks and we don't wash our
| groceries anymore.
| graeme wrote:
| 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...
| acdha wrote:
| Just to be clear, I am not in any way defending the CDC's
| botching the understanding that COVID's primary means of
| spreading is airborne. I just remember reading about this
| on social media, including Zeynep's many posts, without
| ever seeing those moderated. Given the general tenor of
| this post, I suspect that the author might have been
| lumping reasonable claims many experts supported in with
| more speculative claims.
| rhino369 wrote:
| While it took way way way too long for the scientific
| community to recognize airborne spread, it's hard to say
| that stuff like Diamond Princess could ONLY be explained
| by airborne spread. It was early in the pandemic, the
| disease was poorly understood. It's hard to know if the
| quarantine was effective--passengers could have continued
| socializing, sick workers distributing food may have been
| spreading it, etc.
|
| It's a big leap from a single data point.
|
| The more damning issue is that the assumption that it
| wasn't airborne in the first place wasn't really well
| founded.
| graeme wrote:
| Ok, best explained. If you had no prior bias, airborne
| spread was most likely cause for Diamond Princess
| pattern. Western society and WHO had a 100 year prior
| bias against accepting that respiratory diseases spread
| via the air.
|
| It all comes back to the victory of germ theory over
| miasma theory. Germ theory is accurate but people got
| overzealous. Not all germs need be fomites.
| acdha wrote:
| > While it took way way way too long for the scientific
| community to recognize airborne spread
|
| I would make that more specifically as referring to the
| Western public health establishment, especially the CDC
| and WHO. Actual scientists were comfortable saying
| recognition was overdue fairly early on, reaching the
| point in July 2020 where a large group published an open
| letter:
|
| https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/71/9/2311/5867798
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
| Izkata wrote:
| 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.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| This is true but a more subtle distinction about size of
| droplet.
|
| If the virus spread primarily by aerosols then cloth and
| surgical masks would have little preventative value. But
| we know that they do have preventative value.
|
| The reality as understood today is a mix of droplet
| sizes. Larger droplets carry more load and hence more
| risk but work over a smaller radius. But smaller droplets
| can carry enough load to infect; especially since later
| variants seem more infectious (i.e. require a smaller
| load to gain a foothold).
| graeme wrote:
| Not so. Surgical masks still filter about 50-60% of
| aerosols. They are made of similar material to N95 masks,
| only issue is fit.
|
| A 50-60% reduction has substantial effects! There's been
| a lot of "perfect is the enemy of the good, and the good
| is useless" in this pandemic, but we know that 100% of
| people do not get instantly infected when exposed, so
| dropping levels by half will have a substantial impact,
| especially if the infected source wears such a mask too
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| The issue of an airborne disease is not just a matter of
| droplets, but whether infectious particles are aerosolized
| such that they hang in the air for hours. The 6 feet social
| distancing rule only makes sense in the context of droplet
| based, non-aerosol transmission. It was only after more
| than a year into the pandemic that CDC acknowledged that
| COVID is airborne and updated their guidance.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/health/coronavirus-
| airbor...
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-
| screwu...
| snowwrestler wrote:
| "Airborne" and "aerosols" are not synonyms. You're right
| about aerosols but the question above is whether we knew
| that the virus traveled in a manner that a mask could
| interfere with. That includes short-range droplets, not
| just aerosols.
|
| We knew very early on that droplets were likely and that
| masks could block many droplets. The question was whether
| the mask would itself become a major vector in the
| process.
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| rngname22 wrote:
| 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.
| acdha wrote:
| That could definitely explain something like that -
| basically upgrading some random Reddit moderators to "Big
| Tech", and substantially broadening the perceived scope.
| simplotek wrote:
| > 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.
| zaroth wrote:
| > "Are we now expected to..."
|
| I think you are jumping waaay past the assertion you are
| replying to.
| [deleted]
| kazinator wrote:
| What I don't understand is why this has just emerged. Surely,
| this effect is not selective specifically for SARS-CoV? We have
| been smoking for eons, and have had respiratory viruses for
| bigger eons. Is there no documentation about whether smokers
| catch colds and flus more or less?
|
| It reminds of how we supposedly didn't start knowing anything
| about the effectiveness of masks until 2020.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| A coffee and cigar a day, keeps the doctor away.
| susrev wrote:
| yummy cigs > vaccine
| daVe23hu wrote:
| iepathos wrote:
| Reminds me of the silly graphs you can find proving correlation
| is not causation like the correlation between Nicolas Cage movies
| coming out and increase in people drowning by falling into pools.
| If a Nicolas cage movie comes out this year then people are 50%
| more likely to drown by falling into a pool and it's a cover up
| if fact checkers hide this fact from gullible people /s
| pluijzer wrote:
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| There was a study about this and i was aware of this.
|
| Not sure what qualifies as a cover-up It was also not broadly
| mentioned that vitamine d reduces the chance to catch COVID.
|
| I don't see a big conspiracy in that.
|
| Ps. If i remember it correctly, it was that COVID couldn't attach
| to some cells in the lungs well. Which reduced the odds to catch
| COVID.
|
| Ps 2. There's also an interesting study when you catch COVID
| early on and take pure CBD oil.
| imgabe wrote:
| In the height of the pandemic when people were grasping
| desperately at anything that appeared to help (wiping down
| groceries, holding your breath to "prove" you didn't have covid,
| drinking fish tank cleaner etc) I have to admit it makes sense to
| downplay something like smoking preventing Covid.
|
| Covid had/has a pretty low mortality rate and now there is an
| effective vaccine. It makes sense to not encourage people to take
| up a highly addictive habit with myriad lifelong health effects
| just to maybe prevent a disease that would likely have harmed
| them much less than smoking anyway.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > and now there is an effective vaccine
|
| I'm not sure I'd call it 'effective' anymore - it's better than
| nothing, and reduces risks, but 'effective' should have a
| higher bar than what we're seeing today.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| as an ex-smoker I shielded myself more from COVID than I might
| otherwise have because I considered myself a risk category.
| Perhaps this might be the sort of thing which contributes to the
| difference.
| [deleted]
| wiskinator wrote:
| Full disclaimer: I haven't read the article, and am just being a
| smartass.
|
| What if it's because no one wants to get within 2 meters of a
| smoker anymore :)
| Natsu wrote:
| I can also believe that the stuff in smoke that kills your
| lungs could destroy viruses. I think the 'why' is important,
| given how addictive nicotine is and the fact that you're
| trading poisons by smoking to avoid covid.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Built-in social distancing, heh.
| ohadron wrote:
| Interesting. Or smokers having to spend time outside and away
| from crowded places.
| mcqueenjordan wrote:
| Had the same thought.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Can we talk about the great cover-up of zinc deficiency now?
| [deleted]
| Imnimo wrote:
| 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 influenza RT-PCR
| testing.49 Alternatively, as patients with symptoms are more
| likely to have been tested and included in our analysis,
| selection bias could affect this result.50 Smokers are more
| likely to have a cough, meaning they might also be more likely to
| be tested for SARS-CoV-2 than non-smokers, even if they are SARS-
| CoV-2 negative. This more frequent testing could increase the
| proportion of smokers with negative SARS-CoV-2 results in our
| sample, which would bias our results. However, the proportion of
| smokers in our study was low. Furthermore, ex-smokers and people
| with chronic lung disease would also be expected to cough more,
| but these groups did not have higher odds of SARS-CoV-2 test
| positivity. Therefore, the relationship between smoking and SARS-
| CoV-2 infection merits further investigation. Nicotine might
| downregulate angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptors,51 which
| are used by SARS-CoV-2 for cell entry, although studies have
| found increased angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 lung expression
| among smokers and people with chronic obstructive pulmonary
| disease.52, 53 Our findings should not be used to conclude that
| smoking prevents SARS-CoV-2 infection, or to encourage ongoing
| smoking, particularly given the well documented harms to overall
| health from smoking, the potential for smoking to increase
| COVID-19 disease severity,46 and the possible alternative
| explanations for these findings.
|
| I'm not going to check the other 99, but if this is the standard
| of evidence, I don't find "I made a list of 100 studies!"
| particularly persuasive. If it's just incidental correlations
| from studies that aren't designed to specifically investigate the
| causal link and rule out confounding factors, the list doesn't
| mean anything.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| 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.
| Imnimo wrote:
| 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.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Nicotine patches or inhalers would be an option? Assuming it
| is the nicotine and not a different chemical.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The author says it is "intriguing" that providing hospitalized
| smokers with nicotine patches improved outcomes. _You_ might
| think "nicotine withdrawal is a lousy companion to trying to
| recover from COVID" but the author thinks it supports the
| hypothesis that nicotine competes with COVID for ACE2 receptors.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| As this article points out, there was a lot of correct
| information being posted that was flagged as misinformation
| because the officially correct information was incorrect, even
| though much of it was extremely obviously true (such as n95 masks
| reducing the chance of infection). In fact it was simultaneously
| a crisis that n95 masks were in short supply for medical workers
| and disputed that n95 masks could be useful to protect people
| from covid infection.
|
| Before you have a knee-jerk reaction to this, look it up, what I
| am saying is easy to verify for yourself to be accurate.
| axiolite wrote:
| Please point out anywhere that "officially correct information"
| stated that n95 masks did not reduce the chance of infection.
|
| Very early on, I recall statements discouraging mask use
| because of concerns the public would incorrectly wear them and
| increase their risk. At that time there was very limited
| information about how COVID-19 spread, with the NY Subway steam
| cleaning their cars on a nightly basis, and people washing
| their mail in an attempt to prevent infection.
|
| Here's what Factcheck.org has to say on the subject:
|
| https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/scicheck-misinformation-ab...
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| I can find tons of examples very easily. The last link is a
| video of Fauci saying masks won't help and aren't worth it.
| At the time, if you said people should wear masks, you were
| 'spreading misinformation'.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_e58c20c6-8.
| ..
|
| "While Fauci, along with several other US health leaders,
| initially advised people not to wear masks, Fauci later said
| that he was concerned that there wouldn't be enough
| protective equipment for health care workers. This was also
| early in the pandemic before public health experts fully knew
| how contagious the disease was and how it spread."
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-said-masks-not-really-
| effecti...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/10/20/is-
| trum...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JddXPeeNGoo&t=10s
| axiolite wrote:
| Absolutely NONE of your sources quotes anyone claiming that
| N95 masks don't protect against disease.
|
| In several cases, (early on) the statement was made that
| "drugstore" (surgical) masks won't protect the wearer, and
| only those with symptoms were recommended to wear them.
| That changed when research showed asymptomatic people were
| spreading COVID-19, then it was suggested that EVERYONE
| wear a (cloth or surgical) mask, not to protect themselves,
| but to protect the public from you. Other than that,
| everything said was and is still true.
|
| Nothing about N95 masks specifically... Probably because
| the public just couldn't buy them at the time.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| A claim that 'masks' don't protect generally does imply
| N95 masks don't protect specifically.
|
| Did you not see the last video? Why are you trying to
| amend history to suit your political views here? Fauci
| repeatedly discouraged mask use because he said people
| would infect themselves by touching their faces to adjust
| the mask. He said this over and over, and that applies to
| N95 as much as any other mask.
|
| Frankly due to the amount of intentional suppression of
| these videos it's hard to find them. You would think
| there would be plenty of documentation of all the news
| around covid, especially the early days, but lots of tv
| appearances have fallen down the memory hole.
|
| It doesn't not matter, yes it was hard to buy an N95 mask
| at the time, but many, many people have N100 or P100
| masks for work. As a hobby I spray paint sometimes, so I
| have multiple P100 masks, which far exceed anything
| necessary to prevent infection. The truth is people
| should have been encouraged to wear masks, and educated
| on which masks are effective and which were not. Fauci
| was wrong about masks early on, and as usual for him he
| lied about it later (hilariously that he lied is his
| official story, he lied to protect mask supplies, so he
| would rather you think he lied previously rather than was
| incompetent) to try to avoid looking like he made a
| mistake.
| nverno wrote:
| I remember that, it was a funny Catch-22- stop buying masks,
| the doctors need them- but masks don't protect you from covid.
| In retrospect, though, I think the narrative that they weren't
| effective only lasted about as long as the shortage, so
| probably was intended to relieve that situation.
| mort96 wrote:
| This was IMO one of the great blunders which seriously damaged
| trust in governments. Would we have had as many firmly anti-
| mask people if the story had always been "Masks probably work,
| but please don't don't buy them because healthcare workers need
| them"? Probably not.
|
| Morally, I don't think it's acceptable to lie "for the greater
| good"; people who would otherwise have used masks they already
| owned might have died due to that lie. Strategically, I think
| undermining trust in medical institutions is the most dangerous
| thing you can do during a crisis like the covid pandemic.
| ender341341 wrote:
| This one is super unfortunate, I understand that they were
| trying to protect the supply of n95 masks for medical personnel
| but they did it in a completely backwards way that destroyed
| the trust of a massive amount of the population (and it didn't
| help that WHO went out of their way to ignore evidence cause it
| was presented by Taiwan and was inconvenient for China).
|
| I remember knowing super quickly that the answers being given
| were clearly political with a _wink wink_ being given, but also
| if you weren 't looking at the actual sources and were just
| watching fox/cnn/msnbc you weren't getting that metadata so can
| understand people being so frustrated.
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| I'm not on Facebook or Twitter but from here and Reddit, I read
| plenty of articles on COVID and smoking in 2020 and beyond. From
| those articles, if I was asked today I would say less chance of
| catching COVID for smokers but worse outcomes if they do catch
| it. Right or wrong, that is how the information trickled down to
| me. "Cover-up" may be a bit strong...
| Fomite wrote:
| I don't think this has been particularly ignored - in
| epidemiology circles, the reaction, by and large was "Huh. That's
| weird - I wonder why that is?"
|
| But it's also not particularly _actionable_. In terms of a
| modifiable intervention, "Quick, everyone take up smoking!" is a
| horrible idea, so it remains in the domain of "A scientific
| curiosity, and a rare 'W' for one of the worst voluntary health
| risks one can have."
|
| That's not a cover up.
| akimball wrote:
| It is very actionable: Give nicotine to patients. No smoking
| required.
| [deleted]
| RajT88 wrote:
| Yes. That is also a terrible idea. Worse than off-brand uses
| of other medications, because it is addictive on top of being
| unproven.
| akimball wrote:
| Yet it is strictly necessary in order to test the physical
| model.
| geofft wrote:
| I was about to post roughly this comment, but then I
| remembered reading https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine a while
| ago:
|
| > _many asso[?]ci[?]a[?]tions with harm are con[?]founded
| by past or present to[?]bacco use [...] but when pure
| nicotine is ex[?]am[?]ined [...] the harms ap[?]peared
| min[?]i[?]mal: like all stim[?]u[?]lants, nico[?]tine may
| raise blood pres[?]sure some[?]what, and is ad[?]dic[?]tive
| to some de[?]gree, but the risks do not ap[?]pear much more
| strik[?]ingly harm[?]ful than caffeine [...] There is
| lit[?]tle ev[?]i[?]dence from the NRT [nicotine replacement
| therapy] lit[?]er[?]a[?]ture that 'never-smokers' like
| my[?]self are all that likely to be[?]come highly
| ad[?]dicted_
|
| (To be clear, I understand why the medical community would
| be hesitant to endorse this without it rising to the level
| of a "cover-up," but it seems like it's not as bad an idea
| as it intuitively sounds. But it's also unclear if the
| stimulant levels mentioned in that article are anywhere
| close to the levels relevant for covid.)
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Was there any evidence that the nicotine was what helped,
| rather than the smoke or something else?
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Are you sure nicotine is the active ingredient here that's
| mitigating the COVID? It's certainly what smokers crave but
| the COVID virus could be affected by some other part of the
| smoke.
| akimball wrote:
| Sure? I am sure of very little. My priors (i.e. my physical
| model) favor the theory that nicotine prevents infection by
| blocking ACE2 receptors. I have no posterior inferences to
| confirm or refute the hypothesis.
| del_operator wrote:
| Wondering also the chances you get induced social distancing for
| smelling like smoke.
| NoPie wrote:
| Observational studies are rubbish though and suffer from too many
| problems. I don't have much trust in them. It might be true but
| we don't have good evidence that we could cover up.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| I'll just leave this here:
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2021.6539...
| boopmaster wrote:
| The author's framing of the issue as speech suppression is, in my
| eyes, far more interesting than the study and backing evidence,
| and certainly more interesting than contra-claims about acquiring
| COVID here in this thread.
|
| Yet here we are barking at the moon about vitamin D and playing
| jump to conclusions by forcibly cramming words into the post re:
| taking up smoking.
|
| The point isn't to start smoking because this post isn't directly
| about COVID, the point is that inconvenient yet possible truths
| can be crushed by our digital overlords.
| boopmaster wrote:
| afterthought: Author can go ahead and add this thread to list
| of supporting docs. :-P we're doing all the work fighting over
| study itself that we'll bury any idea of censored speech.
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