[billygoat]

I really would like to know if smoking is implicated. Are there any smoker/nonsmoker stats anywhere?

[dredmorbius]

Yes, though that's mostly rolled up in the gender statistics. Men are far more likely smokers than women in China.

Mentioned in TFA.

[Spare_account]

Is the F in 'TFA' what I think it is?

[rkuykendall-com]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM

> RTFM is an initialism for the expression "read the fucking manual".

> RTFA ("read the fucking/featured article"—common on news forums such as Fark.com[6] and Slashdot, where using "TFA" instead of "the article" has become a meme)

[Simon_says]

Yes, you're right. It's "featured".

[severine]

Fine is fine.

[dredmorbius]

Sometimes some of the letters are different.

[bart_spoon]

I don't know of any studies looking specifically at smoking vs non-smoking, but its been highly speculated to be a strong risk factor. Apparently, there is a big gap in prevalence of smoking between men and women in China (close 50% for men, closer to 5% for women), which is thought to be at least partially an explanation for the differences in deaths (2/3rds of deaths were male, 1/3 were female).

[DonaldFisk]

There's this paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/all.14238

"Low prevalence of smokers, and no allergic diseases despite of drug hypersensitivity and urticaria was self-reported by any patients, indicating that allergic diseases and smoking history may not be the susceptible factors for COVID-19."

And this one: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.05.20020107v...

"Together, this study indicates that smokers especially former smokers may be more susceptible to 2019-nCov and have infection paths different with non-smokers."

They reach opposite conclusions.