What happened to eight California vapers hospitalized during the early pandemic?

In April 2020, as the world focused on COVID-19, eight people in California were hospitalized with a different kind of lung crisis. They had e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI)—a severe illness that damages the lungs and was first widely recognized in 2019. This field report from the California Department of Public Health shows these cases were still happening during the pandemic's chaotic start. The report simply tells us these eight people were hospitalized and that doctors linked their injuries to vaping. We don't know what happened to them afterward, how sick they were, or what specific products they used. Because this is just a case series—a report of what happened to a specific group—it can't tell us if vaping caused the injuries for sure, only that there was an association. It also can't tell us if this was happening more or less often than before, since there's no comparison group. It's a reminder that a known danger was still present, even when our attention was elsewhere.