A report from the Mayo Clinic looked at 70,000 patients and found no link between e-cigarettes and COVID-19.
Did you hear about the big new study on vaping and COVID-19? If you didn’t, that’s not surprising. The study didn’t find any association between the two—that is, it found no evidence suggesting that people who vape are more likely to be diagnosed with the disease. Research that leads to null results rarely gets much coverage in the media. In this instance, however, it upends the flood of stories throughout the pandemic that reported that vapers are at greater risk. The New York Times, for example, reported in September that “Vaping Links to COVID Risks Are Becoming Clear.” CNN, Wired, Scientific American, USA Today, and just about every other major news source you can name ran similar stories.
The new study is from a reputable source (the Mayo Clinic) and boasts a large sample of patients (nearly 70,000). Unlike much previous research on tobacco use and COVID, it also sorted patients by their current or former use of tobacco products, as well as the specific products they used (smoking, vaping, or both). In other words, the study had a near-ideal design for detecting whether and what kinds of nicotine consumption may lead to elevated risk of a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Jacob Grier – Slate.com – 2021-06-25.