Translated from Danish after Klaus K emailed me with several studies strengthening the theory that smokers have some protection from new coronavirus:
Klaus K blog
In one study of 140 confirmed patients in Wuhan District, there were 2 smokers and 7 ex-smokers – the remaining 131 patients were never smokers, corresponding to 94% of patients …
“The exact underlying causes of the lower incidence of COVID‐19 in current smokers are still unknown,” the authors write:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/all.14238
In the second study of 1099, covid-19 patients from 552 hospitals in China confirmed that 85% of patients were never smokers, while only 12% were smokers and 2% were ex-smokers:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032
In a third small study of 41 confirmed patients, 38 were found to be non-smokers (93%), while only 3 patients were smokers (7%). None of the 3 smoking cases were serious:
https://www.thelancet.com/…/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183…/fulltext
The figures should be compared to the fact that smoking is much more prevalent in China than here: Much less than half of the population are never-smokers in China. As many as 70% of men are daily or occasional smokers, while only about 5% of women claim to be smokers.
The remarkable and clear figures from these studies are undeniably suggesting that smoking can have a protective effect against covid-19 … just as smoking protects against a variety of bacteria and infections, probably due to nicotine …
But the numbers, of course, have not prevented the corrupt drug mafia from trying to spread the opposite claim in the media – as usual:
Just take a look at this article in which a WHO-leader is trying to speculate that smoking must be the cause of covid-19, because one study had more men than women among patients …
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-cases-why-more-…
Oh, my God. The drug mafia knows no boundaries? You should never follow its advice. And the Danish Board of Health? Yes – unfortunately, it almost always lies when it comes to smoking:
https://www.dr.dk/…/ekspert-om-coronavirus-rygning-er-en-ri…
But you already knew that.
So this is good news for all smokers. Feel free to share …
…
Addendum:
And here is a fourth study:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30079-5/fulltext
Setting: 52 severe hit covid-19 patients enrolled in the Wuhan Jin Yin-tan hospital in January.
32 of these patients died, leaving only 20 survivors. The group consisted of 50 non-smokers (96%) and 2 smokers (4%), who were both among the survivors.
Updated 18:00 GMT
Update 12 Mar 2020: From Klaus K: An additional explanation for the under-representation of smokers with covid-19 in China just turned up: Nicotine downregulates the ACE2 receptor. This is important, because the Wuhan Corona Virus uses ACE2 as its host receptor.
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m406/rr-2
Frank Davis 
I cannot seem to find the medical forum now Frank,but a couple of days ago a medical professional asked if smoking was protective agains coronavirus and the reply from medical professionals ranged from too early to tell to smoking causes xyz.
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Rauch hat anerkannterweise einen desinfizierenden Effekt. Verschiedene Kulturen haben das Rauchen unabhängig voneinander erfunden.
Man räuchert auch Räume aus.
Ignoring no. 2, what I’ve calculated from the other 3 is:
Total patients = 233, so 100%.
Ex smokers = 7, so 3%.
Smokers = 7, so 3%.
Never smoked = 219, so 94%.
Even if I err on the cautious side and say 25% of the population smokes, then the figures for smokers should have been 58, meaning we’re 8 times lower likelihood of contracting the virus. And at 33.3% of the population, they should have seen 78 smoking patients, meaning we’ve got a 10% chance of contracting it in a given group.
Taking study #2, where 12% of the patients smoke, then we’re half the risk at 25% smoking population and roughly one third the likelihood if smokers are 33.3% of the population.
I don’t bother with people who have quit because my belief is they’re at greater risk of contracting the virus.
It’s too early to know what the stats are on Greece, however there’s ample data in Italy; all that’s needed is someone to break that down by age, gender, ethnicity and smoking history. It the figures Rose gave us yesterday are repeated in Italy and very few oldies still smoke, then this will help explain the phenomenon. Also helpful will be fully recovered because I believe smokers actually bounce back at or slightly higher than average.
Thank you Klaus and Franklin. It’s tangible raw data and does deserve greater exposure.
Excellent post! Thank you, Klaus K., for compiling these studies. And thank you, Frank, for translating and sharing it on your blog. It’s no longer just one study that can be brushed off as flawed. There is now quite a bit of data which supports the hypothesis that smoking decreases one’s chances of contracting COVID-19 and/or greatly lessens the severity of the infection. I hope there will be more genuine scientific research done to determine the correlation, but in the current climate which is dominated by Tobacco Control, I can’t imagine there will be any funding to be had.
Well, that might well explain the authorities’ and the media’s hysterical over-reaction to what is, in effect, a fast-spreading but nonetheless not-particularly-lethal version of just one of the many flu-type viruses which have emerged over the last few decades. I can’t remember anyone getting this worked up about SARS or Swine Flu or Bird Flu. After the initial, inevitably hyped-up headlines – all, of course, accompanied by the obligatory doom-laden predictions of a shortage of drugs and of massive overload of the health services (none of which ever actually happened, IIRC) – all of those simply faded into the background as the predicted numbers of “mass deaths” failed to materialise and other news stories took over.
Not so this scare, though. Despite the number of deaths – in the UK at least, and probably elsewhere in Europe – still struggling to reach double figures, each one is reported with breathless excitement by the media as if, instead of reporting one death, they were reporting a thousand! And I don’t remember any countries, anywhere in the world, going into “lockdown” or insisting on quarantine, or closing schools or cancelling big sporting events because of those other flu scares.
So why this one? Well, the uncomfortable statistics cited in Klaus’s comments here would provide the perfect reason for all the panic. Because the longer this disease hangs around, and the more widely it spreads, then, despite the best efforts of Tobacco Control to paint the opposite picture, inevitably, eventually it would become obvious to anyone with eyes in their heads and a functioning few brain cells that the only ones still up and about and healthy and covering all the work of their absent and sickly colleagues are … the smokers. And the idea that reality should ever intrude sufficiently into the public’s consciousness to make them realise that there is any advantage at all to smoking – no matter that it’s just this one and therefore possibly only temporary – must surely be countered with the most stringent of “emergency” measures. It’s a bit like how, whenever some illness or ailment is positively linked to smoking (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Motor Neurone Disease, just to name a few) Tobacco Control always rush to get out a conveniently-handy piece of “research” that they just happen (Blue Peter-style “here’s one I prepared earlier”) to have laying around which proves the exact opposite. Useful that, eh? Also a bit like no-one ever mentions the inconvenient correlation between the “obesity epidemic” and the “non-smoking epidemic,” which is treated like the famous elephant in the room – if no-one mentions it then it’s not really there.
So their attempts to pull the same trick in respect of Covid-19 is, if anything, proof that there is something about this disease that is really worrying them, big time. And, as smoking is the only thing they are concerned with, then their concern must inevitably be smoking-related. After all, the last thing they or the compliant “authorities” want is all that brainwashing undone by any hard evidence from real life!
Well, that might well explain the authorities’ and the media’s hysterical over-reaction to what is, in effect, a fast-spreading but nonetheless not-particularly-lethal version of just one of the many flu-type viruses which have emerged over the last few decades. I can’t remember anyone getting this worked up about SARS or Swine Flu or Bird Flu. After the initial, inevitably hyped-up headlines – all, of course, accompanied by the obligatory doom-laden predictions of a shortage of drugs and of massive overload of the health services (none of which ever actually happened, IIRC) – all of those simply faded into the background as the predicted numbers of “mass deaths” failed to materialise and other news stories took over.
Jax, I am too fed up to explain the problematic. You’re entitled to believe what you want.
Holidays are going cheap right now. How about a cruise?
I wonder could we smoke on board, as SHS excluded.
Even I might have been sceptical of your opinions up until that business with them ramming a smoking ban through the legislation in Austria and killing smoking rooms in the Netherlands.
Then it dawned on me that what they’re doing is tying everyone from the most humble floor cleaner in hospitals through to policy makers to their agenda. In short, “we’re all in this together”.
It’s pushes that the cause is Noble and the end is worth the means, even if us guys do fib just a little, sometimes a lot, we’ll put up with that for the greater good. We’ll give you the money, we’ll pass your legislation and we’ll go along with your constant bombardments by email and your contrived petitions at our constituency and parliament.
We have discussed John Francis Banzhaf III, a total arse wipe who started ASH. We know all about Stanton Glantz and his coup of direct funding from tax on cigarettes and I could go on about their wealth and the power they now wield. I could bore you all as to how Banzhaf used his legal know how to formulate fctc and how ASH has developed so rapidly into a global entity. They really do have the people and or a physical presence (office) in all nations. Even N Korea.
Nor do they give a flying fart about wrecking businesses; not just our leisure facilities, or jobs, or farmers, or people. It is an absolute fact they only care about… what? Doing the bidding of Banzhaf. And that’s it, in a nutshell.
Yes it’s evolved, gone way beyond their original design brief. But that’s what happens with all these global things – and the EU. And we know they spawn sub groups, like the UN. So it is with ASH, they’ve got totally irrelevant flunkies in each and every hospital in Britain, all charged as tobacco controllers. All paid by the hospital trust.
So would I put this at their doorstep? Yes I would. Not as originators, but they’d jump on its coat tails – and that’s exactly what the WHO did. Bog all to start with, now pushing the lockdown and huge levels of funding.
It is very unfortunate that by concentrating people into isolation and hospitals, where damn near 96% walk out just fine, they’re also placing health professionals at risk, and yes it is the nurses and doctors and floor cleaners who are dying. In China, they account for over 10% of the fatalities!
So the smoking thing will get buried. It must because too many people go down if the myth’s busted. Pity because I’d love to see those supercilious pricks, Banzhaf and Glantz spend quality time incarcerated. And Bloomberg as well as Gates made to reimburse business owners. And every penny annie flunkie stripped of their pensions.
“So it is with ASH, they’ve got totally irrelevant flunkies in each and every hospital in Britain, all charged as tobacco controllers. All paid by the hospital trust.”
OT, but related to troughing by ant-smoking ‘professionals’,
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/411261/quit-group-charity-still-paying-board-members-five-years-after-shutting-down
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2020/03/a_new_level_of_troughing.html
Read comments on the latter.
Ripe to contribute some carefully considered contributions to education.
I’m not ready yet.
Caution is advised.
Don’t wreck the cause in a new scene.
Ill considered reactions might.
Thoughtful referenced posts / comments might gain upticks and influence others; –
Must get on to it ! ;=})
Well I got one post past moderation, first post there in many months:
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2020/03/general_debate_12_march_2020.html/comment-page-1#comment-2658293
Heavily plagiarised from Franks (corrected:- thanks!) translation of Klaus K’s Facebook post, with a few added notes. I wonder what local responses will be.
It’s time I started commenting locally. At least this is a small start.
So the smoking thing will get buried. It must because too many people go down if the myth’s busted.
I hope it gets buried!!!
Pity because I’d love to see those supercilious pricks, Banzhaf and Glantz spend quality time incarcerated. And Bloomberg as well as Gates made to reimburse business owners.
So do I!!!
And every penny annie flunkie stripped of their pensions.
I am all for this!!
Unlike people who gloated when I found out that my 33 years (most of which rather handsomely) paid in may be worth at best 50% at worst nothing in state pension. I do feel for everyone having to live with the insecurity I am currently (until 21. June 2021 to be precise) have to live with.
Thanks to Klaus K and Frank for this report. While these non-smokers are awaiting a vaccine, the health services should recommend smoking for the time being. That will never happen. As smokingscot pointed out, a substance that would increase your chance up to 8 fold would be highly recommended.
Today on Joe Rogan’s podcast, his guest was Michael Osterholm, an “expert” in infectious disease epidemiology who works at the University of Minnesota. The main topic was COVID-19. One of the very first things Osterholm stated (around 4 minutes in) was that smoking is an “underlying health problem”, and that 8% to 10% of Chinese men over the age of 70 who smoked died from COVID-19, whereas only 2% of women over 70 died, and that “very few women smoke.” I have no idea where he came up with those numbers. He then went on to mention that in America, we have other underlying health issues, such as obesity. Throughout the podcast, he continued on very much like you would expect researcher from a publicly-funded university would. When Rogan asked him how people should prepare for COVID-19, he made sure to state that people should continue to take their prescription drugs, like high blood pressure medication. [Smoking bad? Check. Obesity bad? Check. Pharmaceutical companies good? Check.] Oh, and he subtly had to push the climate change agenda by mentioning that in Minnesota, “it’s getting warmer there every winter.”
If anyone cares to waste their time watching this run-of-the-mill Progressive propagandist, here you go:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c90da5b4e9f9a0b19484dd4bb14
(I do hope this link will provide running updates throughout the day)
Upper Tier Local Authorities (UTLA) and NHS Regions
London: 91
South East: 51
South West: 41
North West: 37
Midlands: 36
East of England: 29
North East and Yorkshire: 24
It was clear that London was going to be affected, at the latest when on 6.3. :
https ://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-06/london-heathrow-baggage-handlers-test-positive-for-virus
Coronavirus has reached Europe’s busiest airport, after two British Airways baggage handlers at London Heathrow tested positive for the disease.
I had come across people complaining flying into Heathrow that there were no questions/checks on check-out but took this with a pinch of salt.
Anyway, London is an exceptionally busy place with a lot of commuters, so I expect the numbers there to increase sharply throughout the next few days. (If not, I will be happy to have been wrong).
It is a good idea to roll out the kits to the accredited NHS mothership labs (NHS labs are being centralised, the satellite labs won’t have Thermal cyclers as they are doing routine tests only).
What will today bring? Absolutely no idea.
Ah, before I forget:
The WHO:
https ://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
The coronavirus COVID-19 is affecting 119 countries and territories around the world
https ://www.newscientist.com/article/2235342-covid-19-why-wont-the-who-officially-declare-a-coronavirus-pandemic/
It is blatantly obvious that some countries/states had enough and declared a pandemic. The WHO no longer can?
Lets all look for new papers that associate smoking negatively with the corona virus and who funds them.
And those uk figures demonstrate on a crude level that the region’s least likely to smoke have the highest rates of infection whilst the region’s most likely to smoke have the lowest rate of infection. it will be interesting to see if this continues.
This is true, we are always being admonished for our smoking, we rebelled against William the Conqueror too, but that went badly.
North East and Yorkshire: 24
This is a “joke” but the poor guy tells it like it is. No just in Iran.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=uFlxz_1583844639
60 seconds.
I have been following this guy on youtube for quite a while and thought he is just living a pathologist’s wet dream and paints the worst case scenario..
I’m not so sure now
I have no idea when the UK will issue an update. And this site
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c90da5b4e9f9a0b19484dd4bb14
does not, either.
The Telegraph just put the total number of cases for the UK at 456. We’ll have to wait and see.
The department of health just has released:
—————————————
A very rare thing is happening in Germany right now:
https ://www.focus.de/gesundheit/news/coronavirus-ausbruch-im-news-ticker-kam-wie-ein-tsunami-virus-bringt-aerzte-an-ihre-grenzen-merkel-laedt-zum-corona-gipfel_id_11576018.html
Two-year-old infected with corona in Potsdam
Top news (2:41 p.m.): A two-year-old child is being treated with the corona virus in Potsdam for the illness. The child, who comes from Berlin, has pneumonia, but is not in mortal danger, the health office of the state capital reported on Wednesday. The child is cared for in the children’s intensive care unit of the Ernst von Bergmann Clinic.
And, yep, this morning there were prolonged briefings. Merkel told us that we can expect 60% – 70% of the population to become infected and that the death toll will rise.
I guess Nordrhein Westfalen is finished testing the carneval “Schnapsleichen” and is proceeding with the elderly population.
In the meantime over the big pond…
Vanity Fair Magazine, which will soon be out of business, and their third rate Fake reporters, who make up sources which don’t exist, wrote yet another phony & boring hit piece. The facts are just the opposite. Our team is doing a great job with CoronaVirus!
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c90da5b4e9f9a0b19484dd4bb14
The case number has been updated to 456 cases.
Unless I just don’t get how to work the site; adding up the cases in “Upper Tier Local Authorities (UTLA) and NHS Regions” gives 309 cases. Hopefully this will soon be corrected!
Unfortunately the site does not update regularly.
There is definitely a glitch in the above site; adding up the cases in “Upper Tier Local Authorities (UTLA) and NHS Regions” now gives 357 cases.
Why do they keep counting cases? I live in a small country and 10 cases should logically be worse then 500 in Germany. US is huge and some parts of it are very isolated. Same with Russia by the way. Percentage is what they should count in my opinion. Very strange that they do not.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Your country should be on that long list. Once it’s name turns blue you can click on it and get percentages.
WHO has now (grudgingly) declared it to be a pandemic. Perhaps more and more countries telling them to fo and doing their own thing helped.
Dear Mr Davis
So smoking appears to prevent infection by this coronavirus (and others?). There is manifestly a role for an organisation to promote smoking to stay healthy, something with a catchy name – Action on Smoking and Health would cover it: ASH for short.
I wonder if our Debs could handle the transition to promoting smoking for the good of our health (and actually start earning her keep), or would her head explode?
DP
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I don’t have a reference but I seem to remember that this was also true during Spanish Flu.
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Eight studies have now shown that smokers are strongly underrepresented among coronavirus hospital patients compared to the Chinese smoking prevalence. Dr. Farsalinos has done an analysis on the studies. From the abstract:
“An unusually low prevalence of current smoking was observed among hospitalized COVID-19 patients (8.7%) compared to the expected prevalence based on smoking prevalence in China (30.3%) P < 0.0001). This preliminary analysis does not support the argument that current smoking is a risk factor for hospitalization for COVID-19, and might even suggest a protective role."
https://www.qeios.com/read/article/554
Interesting article. I’ve been a smoker for 35 years and try to stay objective with a healthy degree of scepticism and awareness of my own confirmation bias, but that works both ways. To play Devil’s advocate to your Devil’s advocate, I want remind you that correlation is not causation. Some other factors might be in play. For example, people with a propensity for lung problems are less likely to be smokers in the first place, and the initial symptoms of corona virus include a loss of sense of smell and shortness of breath, which are both common conditions among long term smokers, so it is feasible that a large percentage of smokers with covid would never realise they had it. Cheers! :)
” For example, people with a propensity for lung problems are less likely to be smokers in the first place,”
Except we all know that almost all smokers start as wee li’l Children Victimized By Big Tobacco… and there are very few of them with “lung problems.” (At least there used to be. Unfortunately, as secondary smoke exposure at home has gone down we seem to have experienced an almost identical rise in childhood asthma (No, no particular graph handy on that… though I’d love to see one!))
Your point about accepting mild symptoms as just a bit out of the norm could well be true though!
– MJM, who’s generally a bit out of the norm in many ways…
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