08-14-2020, 06:25 AM
A few months back, when I was looking closely at the early reports, former smokers had less serious illness (IIRC) in some of the data. An odd result.
I then kept seeing some warnings that smoking made things worse, but I never chased down their data to see what was behind the warnings.
Here's a recent study at Stanford indicating teens that vape have a higher chance of getting the disease. From what I can tell by a quick scan of it, the same results might have been true if they'd studied teens that hold hands at church and take communion. Or maybe if they'd studied any subset of youths that socialize in the same manner as vapers.
The fact that smoke enters their lungs didn't seem to factor into the evaluation, based on what the article reports. (It may be critical, or it may not.) I don't see (from the article anyway) that they were asked about the severity of their COVID. Conceivably, they had more cases of COVID than non-vapers, but the severity wasn't compared.
Another article about this study reported "The researchers note, however, that vaping involves the repeated touching of hands to the mouth and face, which is associated with the spread of COVID-19." Continuing down that line, smokers may be more likely than non-smokers to get the infection initially in their mouth or nostrils rather than in their lungs, which might impact the course of the disease (that's just a hypothesis of mine which has no data supporting or refuting it that I'm aware of).
It seems that vaping is a behavior, like choir singing, that leads to a higher incidence of COVID-19. If so, both should be advised against or prohibited similarly for that reason. Separately, the damage to the lungs that may be caused by tobacco and other smoke should suggest controls to limit the practice.
(I do not condone vaping or smoking. I wanted to point out what seems to be studied here, and what apparently wasn't.)
I then kept seeing some warnings that smoking made things worse, but I never chased down their data to see what was behind the warnings.
Here's a recent study at Stanford indicating teens that vape have a higher chance of getting the disease. From what I can tell by a quick scan of it, the same results might have been true if they'd studied teens that hold hands at church and take communion. Or maybe if they'd studied any subset of youths that socialize in the same manner as vapers.
The fact that smoke enters their lungs didn't seem to factor into the evaluation, based on what the article reports. (It may be critical, or it may not.) I don't see (from the article anyway) that they were asked about the severity of their COVID. Conceivably, they had more cases of COVID than non-vapers, but the severity wasn't compared.
Another article about this study reported "The researchers note, however, that vaping involves the repeated touching of hands to the mouth and face, which is associated with the spread of COVID-19." Continuing down that line, smokers may be more likely than non-smokers to get the infection initially in their mouth or nostrils rather than in their lungs, which might impact the course of the disease (that's just a hypothesis of mine which has no data supporting or refuting it that I'm aware of).
It seems that vaping is a behavior, like choir singing, that leads to a higher incidence of COVID-19. If so, both should be advised against or prohibited similarly for that reason. Separately, the damage to the lungs that may be caused by tobacco and other smoke should suggest controls to limit the practice.
(I do not condone vaping or smoking. I wanted to point out what seems to be studied here, and what apparently wasn't.)