One was that people who took Vitamin D were less likely to be symptomatic. The other was that people who smoke cigarettes were something like 80% less likely to experience severe respiratory complications.
I take Vitamin D every day and smoke like the devil, and I'm the only person I know who's never had covid (or at least never tested positive for it... and I'm a paranoiac who for several years tested anytime my nose itched). Confirmation bias of one right here.
Did either of those things have any truth to them? I do realize that daily smokers tend to underreport their smoking, which could lead the stats to lean toward showing that nonsmokers got severe disease at a higher rate than their percentage of the general population, if smokers lie at a rate of 5:1 on their hospital admission forms... but it never sat right with me that this wasn't followed up. I seem remember a similar thing with smokers / reduced risk of acute lung disease among the cleanup workers at Chernobyl, so in some way it made sense to me at the time.
They found people who didn’t get outside had a significant shortening of their life compared to those who got outside more. Smoking, being something that gets people outside, ended up being a bit of a wash. Spending all your time inside is about as bad as smoking… it may have even been slightly worse. I tried finding the study quickly, but it wasn’t coming up.
For what it’s worth, I never got COVID in the last 5 years either, despite testing every time I got a little sick. But I also spent a considerable amount of time indoors and away from people. I’m not a smoker. I’ve been supplementing with vitamin D on and off for years, but mostly off during the Covid years. More recently I’ve been pretty consistent with it, but covid finally got me. I have it right now. I thought I was out of the woods.
