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No, Smoking Won’t Save You From COVID-19
A critically important study is being misinterpreted
This week — an absolutely HUGE study out of England gives us insight into who is at risk of dying with COVID-19.
But beware folks — this is a pre-print. No peer review has had it’s way with the study yet. Nevertheless that hasn’t stopped major news outlets from covering it, with some drawing potentially dangerous conclusions. Let’s set the record straight.
This is a paper out of Ben Goldacre’s lab.
If you don’t know Ben, he is an extremely well-regarded British physician and evidence-based-medicine evangelist. His TED talk on Bad Science has over 500,000 views on Youtube and is well worth a watch. He knows what he’s doing.
In fact, some people consider me the American Ben Goldacre. Those people are my parents. And that’s it.
This is a study of more than 17,000,000 individuals in England who receive primary care from clinics…
