Unfortunately, there are lot of unreasonable people out there. I would not be surprised if a ton of people, if they were to hear the WHO or CDC agree that smoking reduces the risk of COVID infection, would start smoking, and get addicted. Some of those who were already addicted and were trying to quit would decide to stop trying.
The issue is that this information seems to have been suppressed, censored, and outright lied about by authorities. Now, on one hand, I get it: organizations like the WHO and CDC are not only interested in the raw outcomes of trials and research, but are also responsible for influencing public health policy. I think it's pretty safe to say that telling people smoking helps protect from COVID would be against public health goals.
I honestly don't know where I stand on this. I think I'm fine with orgs like the WHO and CDC deliberately not making recommendations on, or being silent about, things that they don't believe are healthy to encourage. But outright lying, denying the results of trials that do prove a correlation, crosses the line for me.