I’ve been interested in the story that smoking protects against coronavirus. So I searched Google news for “smokers protected against coronavirus”. And got the opposite report:
Smokers told to quit now as they are ’14 times more at risk from coronavirus’
A report from Wuhan was mentioned, but no link provided
Smokers urged to quit now ‘more than ever’ or face greater risk from coronavirus
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine was mentioned, but no link provided.
Smokers appear to be at higher risk from coronavirus – expert
A “small” study is cited, but no link provided.
All the stories warn against smoking.
There’s no mention whatsoever of stories saying the opposite.
…
UK PM Boris Johnson ‘Sitting up in Bed’ in London Hospital.
…
Frank Davis 
Google has changed the way search results work. According to Vint Cert, google now uses neural networks instead of the old hand-coded algorithm.
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/9f003506-89d9-48ba-85cc-702c913f03f9
At the end of the video, Cert/google are congratulated for making conspiracy theories so much harder to find. How you train a neural network to accurately determine what is a conspiracy theory or not is beyond me. In addition the result are now limited to only a few pages. So only a fraction of the world wide web is accessible now using google.
I think on top of the neural network they are using the tried and tested technique of simply white listing sites on certain search terms. My blog became invisible on relevant search terms and so I have unpublished it because there is no point in sharing information if nobody can find it. Which is a shame seeing as the WWW was intended for researchers to find and share information.
Frank I think I have one in the bin
I found one article from India using DuckDuckGo, Mr. Davis, and have discovered that Woody Allen is on our side:
Google can no longer be trusted, they work hand in hand with the Chinese Communist Party and are on the side of people like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg. Twenty years ago they were the best search engine around but over time thay have morphed into just another hypocritical supercorporation.
https://www.mid-day.com/articles/smoking-overkills/234519
slugbop007
Agreed. Google is not impartial and they actively promote non smoking sites, even if one enters key words that are specific to a site, it still will not come up.
Enter “pro smoking bloggers” and what comes up on page one is tobacco tactics site – that lists Frank’s site.
I got better results using dogpile. But no mention of the one by zero hedge, only the timid one by the Mail.
This time I typed smokers coronavirus with DuckDuckGo. Sometimes it all depends on the phrasing of one’s search query. Here’s one from your Daily Mail. It seems that they can’t make up their minds from paragraph to paragraph.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8152597/Does-smoking-greater-risk-coronavirus.html
slugbop007
The Mayoress of Montreal announced yesterday, smiling all the while, that bars and terraces will re-open on May 2nd but we must continue to maintain the 2 meter rule. Does that mean that you and your friend, or date, or whatever, has to sit 2 meters away from you? How friendly, how romantic, how generous of her. HOW ABSURD. The next run on depleted stock might be tape measures.
slugbop007
Are you surprised, Frank?
If it comes to light that smokers have been saved by their intermitent but persistant inhalation of nitric oxide that stopped the virus replicating if it works the same as SARS, how are they going to explain their decades of bad advice and distorted science?
The knowledge, like the humble and not very exciting tobacco plant, has to be stamped out.
Yes it does remind me of the difficulty they had a couple of centuries ago, trying to get the word out that the earth is not flat.
Or, before that, that the earth is not the center of the solar system.
Takes time and tenacity, yet word of mouth is our strength.
I just started watching Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, Part 1, ‘The Skin of our Teeth’.
slugobop007
Is this the one you’re looking for? http://www.ecigarette-research.org/research/index.php/whats-new/2020/278-corona
And this is interesting, too: https://antithrlies.com/2020/04/04/can-smoking-protect-you-against-covid-19/
Google has become a virus. It is too intrusive and too in your face. Always shoving ads in your face and when you remove them they ask you why you didn’t like it. Screw Google!
slugbop007
I had an email a few weeks ago from Google about “problems with your website” and an inviation to log into Google Accounts. Unfortunately I cannot log in, and since then I have had reports that a search on my site leads to an online pharmacy. I am still thinking what to do next.
Philip, I just searched “Burch Curve” (with the quotes) on Google; the first two results were for your site, and the URLs look correct. However, clicking on one actually redirects me to on online “pharmacy” selling erectile dysfunction drugs.
I’m pretty sure the email you received was not official, and you were phished. You should immediately change your Google Accounts password and report the phishing email to Google.
Also, It definitely seems like someone got into and modified your Google account, because the redirect only happens in Google search results. DuckDuckGo (my current search engine of preference) search results take me directly to your site.
I use to use DuckDuckGo.
Now I’m using Startpage, and have made it my default search engine.
Read more here:
https://www.startpage.com/
Thanks for the warning. I will contact Google about it.
The 14x story, or close variations with quotes from the same expert, pull up roughly 300 (yes, 300) references to various press outlets, most or many seeming to be in the UK. Clearly an antismoking paid press release at a fairly high level. The full release is a moderately skillful blend of truth, lies, and misdirections.
If you google the Doc’s name and portion of his quote, and then tell google to expand to the links that it found “similar” to those first 50 or so, you’ll get the 300 links.
That’s what the endless pocket of our tax monies buy us.
– MJM
“Endless pocket of tax monies” -? – COVID has cost countries billions in Health Care and economic bailouts. The WHO is funded to lead Tobacco Control for the purpose of saving money on Health Care costs. The WHO failed to control COVID and likely cost countries more than what tobacco use would have. When this is all over, how can countries justify keeping the WHO and other such parasites going? Will countries even have any money left after COVID?
To find articles on cigarettes, look for what you know to be in them with no mention of tobacco or smokers.
Clinical Trial Underway to Test Nitric Oxide in COVID-19 Patients
Apr 9, 2020
“Doctors at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) are enrolling patients in an international clinical trial to find out if inhaled nitric oxide benefits those with novel coronavirus (COVID-19) who have severely damaged lungs.
Right now, there are no approved treatments for the illness caused by COVID-19. The severe form of lung failure — acute respiratory distress syndrome — is the leading cause of death in COVID-19. Nitric oxide has been found to improve blood flow in areas of the lungs still receiving air, increasing the amount of oxygen in the blood stream.
Along with being used to treat failing lungs, nitric oxide has been found to have antiviral properties against coronaviruses.”
https://www.physiciansweekly.com/clinical-trial-underway-to-test-nitric-oxide-in-covid-19-patients/
Nitric oxide: From menace to marvel of the decade
A briefing document prepared for the Royal Society and Association of. British Science Writers. Pearce Wright. May 1996.
“Previously, nitric oxide was regarded as an environmental pollutant and little else: at best a chemically reactive nuisance, at worst a poison. In the exhaust fumes of cars it reacted readily with oxygen to produce smog, increasing the risk of asthma. When discharged into the atmosphere from power station chimneys it contributed to the ecological damage from acid rain.”
“Consequently, a response bordering on disbelief greeted the discovery that cells lining the walls of blood vessels, endothelial cells, intentionally synthesised nitric oxide as a muscle relaxant. The molecule is short-lived, and a constant supply is generated by endothelial cells in response to the sheer stress of the blood flow on the artery wall. The notion that such a noxious little molecule should also hold a key to a healthy body and mind was counter-intuitive, and is still disconcerting to some people.”
“While skeptics still thought it inconceivable that a biochemical pathway for producing nitric oxide was likely to exist in endothelial cells, they were batting against evolution. It transpires that the ability of organisms to produce nitric oxide is an ancient one, developed long before mammals emerged. Indeed, the horseshoe crab, with origins going back 500 million years, depends on the L-arginine: nitric oxide process to prevent its blood cells from aggregating.”
https: //web.archive.org/web/20130625021526/http://web.archive.org/web/20061129131744/http://www.absw.org.uk/Briefings/Nitric+oxide.htm
No longer available
Good finds, Rose – thanks!
The travel, tourist and restaurant/bar/patio business has been hit so hard by COVID, that in order to recover, desperate measures like relaxing smoking bans may have to be taken. Maybe the world will now realize that second hand smoke is not the monster threat after all. Viruses are a real and immediate threat! The world may just have to consider Nitric Oxide as beneficial. It is impossible to eliminate all risks and the focus should be on viruses now. After COVID, a lot of health conscious people will be scared to return to their smoke-free places. So, to get the economy going again, let’s overlook the SHS risk.
“With secondhand smoke, the main concerns are exposure to levels of carbon monoxide and respirable particulate matter.
While air nicotine metabolised as cotinine provides a marker for measuring exposure to tobacco smoke, the nicotine is not present in such quantities as to present health concerns”.
http: //web.archive.org/web/http://www.ashscotland.org.uk/ash/files/non-tobaccosmokingmaterials.doc
No longer works
Carbon monoxide could fight disease
2008
“In fact CO is produced as a normal part of a reaction that generates antioxidants in the blood when tissues are inflamed. It was once dismissed as a worthless by-product of this reaction, but now it seems that the gas itself has the ability to calm inflammation in humans too.
“Your body is already loaded with carbon monoxide,” says Huib Kerstjens, ..
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726484.100-carbon-monoxide-could-fight-disease.html?feedId=health_rss20
The benefits of quitting – Pfizer
“What most people don’t know is that the health benefits of a smoke-free life can begin almost immediately.”
After 24 hours
By now all the carbon monoxide is completely eliminated from the body
https://web.archive.org/web/20090105220440/http://www.pfizerlife.co.uk/SmokingTheBenefitsOfQuitting.aspx
Terrifying.
The leisure industry will be challenged if these lockdowns are relaxed. Seems they’ll be made to keep social distancing, so roughly half their seats and tables will need to be removed. No more of this “intimate” dining, more like a sterile, characterless utility.
Hotels provided that (except at breakfast), but most eating and drinking places depended on lots of bums on seats. Only way to keep that sort of thing going is to time people, so a 55 minute slot, then you’re out.
The logistics of slowly removing some restrictions are daunting, however it’ll be a long time before social distancing is scrubbed. One feels for big sport events like footie and rugby, but also for motor sports and athletics.
Oddly I’m fine all that, plus opera and the arts because I quit the lot in 2006, following the ban in Scotland. Even restaurants because an hour between fags is my max, especially if it’s business or a boring companion.
TO Александра Собина says: That asshole was probably paid a pretty penny that was illegally extracted from our pockets to pose for that photo.
slugbop007
Oops, I did it again – selected the wrong name from a drop-down menu. My real name is Doug or Douglas. Sorry about that.
It turned out that my taх free tobacco supplier stopped working because of COVID , and I had to buy 10 packs of cigarettes in store. Of course I was not happy that in this way I support health zealots, but there is nothing to do. So, I’m sitting on my sofa, smoking, throwing out an empty pack… And suddenly it dawned on me: what a “terrifying photo” was on it — it was a photo of an asshole! Unbelievable! Although I believe that fanatics are capable of as much, but this is too much. I went and took out of bin this pack, I wanted to see a comment on beneath of picture. It turned out to be throat cancer. But looks so much like an asshole!
The Department of Health NOT answering a freedom of information request, but at least we get to know where they come from.
Pictures on cigarette packets
2009
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pictures_on_cigarette_packets
“The images used come from the European Commission library.”
Another abomination introduced by Labour but finally let through by Cameron.
100 Tory MPs to fight plain packaging on cigarettes
2015
“Exclusive: 100 Conservative MPs are expected to vote against Government plans when the measure is put to a free vote of MPs in the next few weeks”
“There was widespread surprise last week when Jane Ellison, a junior health minister, said MPs would be given a vote on whether to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes.
Miss Ellison said plain packaging was a “proportionate and justified response” because of the health risks associated with smoking. Any new plain packaging law would come into force in May 2016.
The Cabinet is understood to be split on the measure, with Theresa May, the Home Secretary, and George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Secretary, not forewarned about the plans.
The measure is likely to become law because of backing from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and some Tory MPs.
However as many as 100 Conservative MPs are now expected to vote against the plans when the measure is put to a free vote of MPs in the next few weeks.
The news came shortly after Labour announced plans to bring in plain packaging as soon as possible.
One source said that Jeremy Hunt, the Health secretary, has justified the plans by telling colleagues “we were under pressure from Labour to do it”.
Another Tory MP said the plans were not the policies that should be backed by a right of centre political party: “We need some authentic Conservative bloody policies.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11372326/100-Tory-MPs-to-fight-plain-packaging-on-cigarettes.html
It has come to light over the years that many of those graphic “pathology porn” photos are not what they are claimed to depict. A couple of the “smokers” in the photos have come forward to claim that they were, in fact, nonsmokers who were in the hospital for medical procedures unrelated to so-called “smoking-related diseases” (one photo of an unconscious man on a ventilator was apparently taken–without his permission–while he was recovering from back surgery, I believe).
Therefore, I wouldn’t put it past Tobacco Control to Photoshop an actual asshole onto someone’s throat and claim it was a genuine tracheotomy photo. They know people would subconsciously recognize it as an asshole and be repulsed, and they probably also get a good laugh knowing that smokers are forced to carry around and look at a picture of an asshole all day.
Turned on my zombie box this morning, and first what I saw and heard was: stop smoking, drinking and taking drugs. Smoking first!
Again 10 packs of fags was bought in store. And again there is a pack of asshole picture. I think I have to save it, may become a great museum item later.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/france-testing-whether-nicotine-could-prevent-coronavirus-1.4908805
Mainstream media is just now reporting this on April 23rd. Are they desperate enough to consider smoking as a defence to COVID?