[democracy]

A highly addictive habit. If 99% of smokers could enjoy one cigarette a day with morning coffee or afternoon drink then smoking would never become a big issue. Most of them end up with 1-2 packs a day damaging theirs and their family health.

[javajosh]

I remember hearing somewhere that even one cigarette will paralyze your alveoli for 24 hours. This would, I assume, make you more susceptible to contagions since foreign particles will make contact with your blood for longer period. If this were true, then even one cig a day would be a real problem, especially in Covid-times.

[asdff]

There isn't evidence to suggest cigarette smokers are more likely to catch covid

[KerrAvon]

There is evidence that if you smoke and catch COVID, it will be more severe.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/27/smokers-much...

[Nav_Panel]

No evidence of that there. Only that "current smokers were 80% more likely to be admitted to hospital and significantly more likely to die from Covid-19 if they became infected" -- did they control for other factors, that tend to go along with smoking, like obesity (and socioeconomic status)? Where's the link to their paper?

All the genetic stuff too is super suspicious, I would be _shocked_ if "genetic predisposition to smoking" had no impact whatsoever on any other variable that could cause more severe COVID.

Here's some actual studies:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33420786/

> We conducted a cross-sectional, observational study on the 1769 sailors of the same navy aircraft carrier at sea exposed at the same time to SARS-CoV2 to investigate the link between tobacco consumption and Covid-19.

> Current smoking status was associated with a lower risk of developing Covid-19 but cannot be considered as efficient protection against infection. The mechanism of the lower susceptibility of smokers to SARS-CoV-2 requires further research.

https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...

> A total of 7162 patients were included, with 482 being smokers. The POR was 0.24 (95%CI 0.19–0.30). Unlike the original study, the association between smoking and disease severity was not statistically significant using random-effects meta-analysis (OR 1.40, 95%CI 0.98–1.98). In agreement with the original study, no statistically significant association was found between smoking and mortality (OR 1.86, 95%CI 0.88–3.94).

> An unusually low prevalence of smoking, approximately 1/4th the expected prevalence, was observed among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Any association between smoking and COVID-19 severity cannot be generalized but should refer to the seemingly low proportion of smokers who develop severe COVID-19 that requires hospitalization. Smokers should be advised to quit due to long-term health risks, but pharmaceutical nicotine or other nicotinic cholinergic agonists should be explored as potential therapeutic options, based on a recently presented hypothesis.

[dragonwriter]

> did they control for other factors, that tend to go along with smoking, like obesity

Obesity is anti-correlated with smoking, though smoking can cause a lot of the same health problems as obesity.

[Nav_Panel]

...It's complicated, apparently, depending on how much you smoke, and whether you were a former smoker: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4401671/

> Overall, current smokers were less likely to be obese than never smokers (adjusted OR 0.83 95% CI 0.81-0.86). However, there was no significant association in the youngest sub-group (≤40 years). Former smokers were more likely to be obese than both current smokers (adjusted OR 1.33 95% CI 1.30-1.37) and never smokers (adjusted OR 1.14 95% CI 1.12-1.15). Among smokers, the risk of obesity increased with the amount smoked and former heavy smokers were more likely to be obese than former light smokers (adjusted OR 1.60, 95% 1.56-1.64, p<0.001). Risk of obesity fell with time from quitting. After 30 years, former smokers still had higher risk of obesity than current smokers but the same risk as never smokers.

[justsomehnguy]

Current anecdata says what smoker's lungs are more 'trained' for an abuse so smokers are less susceptible for infection.

I find this slightly amusing, considering what there are multiple cases where otherwise healthy non-smokers have a very severe symptoms.

[Nav_Panel]

My sense is that smoking is related to changes in ACE2 expression in the lungs, which would have some effect on CoV-2.