Nicotine patches are to be tested on coronavirus patients and healthcare workers treating infected people after initial studies suggested smokers were less likely to catch the disease...
The authors write: "Our cross-sectional study strongly suggests that daily smokers have a much lower probability of developing symptomatic or severe SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to the general population.
"The effect is significant, it divides the risk by five for ambulatory patients and by four for hospitalised patients. You rarely see that in medicine."
"The effect is significant, it divides the risk by five for ambulatory patients and by four for hospitalised patients. You rarely see that in medicine."
Now we know - the virus has a sense of fun.
4 comments:
I guess smokers are now so shunned and solitary that they don't get to mix with mainstream society. I'm hoping the same will happen with Thursday clap-refusers.
I started smoking years ago because it was the only thing that provided relief from really bad hay fever. So I can easily believe smoking can affect the lung's susceptibility to the virus by blocking the ACE receptors or whatever. But I cannot understand how nicotine patches are supposed to help, they won't affect the lung surface the same way (if at all)? They might as well overdose them on tomatoes, peppers and aubergines to raise their nicotine levels. Either they are missing the point because anti-smokers cannot understand that smoking is not all about nicotine, or the trial is simply being set up to deliberately fail so the anti-smokers can claim smoking doesn't work.
I saw a comment a few weeks ago on N.O. that the Chinese had noticed this. Considering that roughly 50% of Chinese smoke as opposed to 17% British should give 83% of us cause to worry. I don't use emoticons but I'm sure there's a smug one with a wicked grin.
Sam - Thursday clap has returned on a bigger scale round here so maybe you are right, maybe clap-refusers will be isolated without having to do anything else.
Woodsy - the nicotine patch idea is odd because it would be unethical if there is no real prospect of it working.
Andy - yes the Chinese link came out early but seems to have dropped out of sight. Not surprising I suppose but such an obvious clue should be followed up.
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