A study titled ‘The influence of pro-vaping “gatewatchers” on the dissemination of COVID-19 misinformation on Twitter’ has been published in something called the Journal of Medical Internet Research. It’s paywalled but the pre-print version is here.
It is yet another whinge about people retweeting things that ‘public health’ academics don’t agree with.
The authors lament the lack of gatekeepers on Twitter to control what scientific information people have access to. They then invent the meaningless term ‘gatewatchers’ to describe anyone who has built up a following and puts out interesting tweets. After the usual dredging of Twitter, they conclude that quite a few of the people who mentioned the evidence that smokers are less likely to get COVID-19 in 2020 had a ‘pro-vaping bias’.
A review of early clinical data in Wuhan province found that smokers were less likely to be admitted to the ICU due to COVID-19 complications, compared to non-smokers [10]. Although the study itself did not provide any evidence of a causal relationship between smoking and COVID-19 infection or progression, the authors posited that the anti-inflammatory properties of nicotine might be responsible for the unexpectedly low prevalence of COVID-19 infected smokers in countries with high smoking rates [12, 13].
Christopher Snowdon – Velvet Glove, Iron Fist – 2022-09-12.
Want More Investigative Content?
