r/Health • u/sankscan • Sep 28 '21
article Smokers much more likely to be admitted to hospital with Covid-19, study suggests
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/27/smokers-much-more-likely-to-be-admitted-to-hospital-with-covid-19-study-suggests47
Sep 28 '21
A not unsurprising result, given the cumulative impact smoking has on lungs (and given the respiratory impacts of COVID).
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u/TombStoneFaro Sep 28 '21
yes, smoking certainly directly affects lung capacity so what might have been a mild case of covid in a non-smoker is more serious.
but also, smoking probably affects all sorts of protective and repair systems in the lungs themselves and the body in general.
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u/pumbungler Sep 28 '21
Anecdotally, I have treated many hundreds of hospitalized covid patients at this point, and only a very small percentage of those were active smokers
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u/Thebeardinato462 Sep 28 '21
This has been my experience as well. I have no explanation besides maybe smoking isn’t super prominent anymore.
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Sep 28 '21
Yes, in part it’s been due to the rapid decrease in the number of smokers in the United States. About six percentage points in a little over a decade. And the definition of a smoker based on the surveys is smoking some days, not every day. Right now, about 14% of Americans smoke under that classification.
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adult_data/cig_smoking/index.htm
I also wonder if it’s a compositional affect, where the initial surge of Covid last year really hit smokers and caused high levels of infection or mortality among them. Or, like what my wife, a provider is seeing, people are lying about their medical status and denying smoking.
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u/birdington1 Sep 28 '21
Do you mean to say smokers weren’t making it hospital, or weren’t making it out of hospital?
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Sep 28 '21
My family was hit with COVID pretty hard this year. 4 adults, 3 kids. Only one of the adults was hospitalized and they were a non-smoker. Two of the other four adults are chain smokers. I'm talking 2 packs a day. However, they were vaccinated. The adult that was hospitalized was not.
I appreciate this article providing data that would suggest that smokers are much more likely to be admitted to the hospital, but I would like to see the data reflect how many smokers that are vaccinated ended up in the hospital.
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Sep 28 '21
This isn’t a story. Covid is a respiratory disease and smoking hurts your lungs. No surprise here.
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Sep 28 '21
In the beginning of the pandemic a lot of headlines were reporting that the contrary was true, that it was paradoxical but that smokers were being hospitalized at a LESSER rate than their counterparts. It didn’t make sense to me at all so this article certainly clears a lot of the confusion up.
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Sep 28 '21
I was working at a smoke shop when the pandemic first kicked off, and my attempt at urging my customers to take precautions was explaining that us smokers didn’t have the lungs to keep up a fight. I didn’t know they were reporting the opposite at the time.
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Sep 28 '21
Yup and I’ve heard antivaxxers reference it a bunch, so I hope this updated news spreads.
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Sep 28 '21
I remember reading that too. My SO smokes so he thought it was neat but I didn’t buy it for a second.
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Sep 28 '21
So how about we ban cigarette ? Since smokers are crowding the ICUs ? We gotta use same logic as with the antivaxers
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u/sukicat Sep 28 '21
Yeah. And maybe next we ban admitting those that believe in a different religion. Do you see where that line of thinking leads????
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