A new meta-analysis of studies on smoking and COVID-19 progression was released today as a preprint.* A meta-analysis is a study that pools together the data from many studies to look at the big picture. One thing is quite straightforward: once diagnosed with COVID-19, smokers are more than twice as likely to develop a severe …

I want nothing more than for the COVID-19 crisis to be over as fast as possible, but it’s important to look carefully at the data and be realistic in order to do our best in arriving at a solution. Several preprints* were released this weekend that, together, suggest three things: On the bright side, the …

Disclaimer: Nothing on this page constitutes medical advice. See the disclaimer at the bottom of the page for more details. On March 23, Dr. Zev Zelenko wrote an open letter “to medical professionals all around the world” about his treatment for COVID-19 using hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc sulfate. Days before, he had addressed a YouTube video …

Whether pets such as cats and dogs can get COVID-19 is a subject of emerging controversy. Just today, a preprint* originally released on March 31 suggesting pets can be infected was published in Science. On the other hand, a new preprint was released today suggesting domestic pets under typical domestic circumstances are not being infected. …

On Tuesday, I wrote to you about new study showing that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, infects the throat, not just the lungs, and the infection may actually start in the throat before it starts in the lungs. And since the evidence for infecting the throat came from either oropharyngeal swabs (swabs of the …

If you feel sick, what are the chances it’s the coronavirus? Researchers from the Los Angeles Departments of Public Health and Health Services and the Los Angeles County and University of Southern California Medical Center tested everyone who presented with mild flu-like illness to the emergency room or urgent care on March 12, 13, 15, …

A new study (as with virtually all circulating information on COVID-19, not yet peer-reviewed), shows that ACE2 can easily explain why smoking is correlated with worse outcomes in COVID-19. Background ACE2 is an enzyme whose normal role in our physiology is to lower our blood pressure, and to prevent damage to tissues from fibrosis (laying …

New research suggests SARS-CoV-2 infects the throat, which makes important differences in how I will approach prevention. Why This Matters When I first wrote The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus, I took the position that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was most likely mainly infecting the lung without infecting parts of the upper …