[Avodah] How To Religiously Respond to the Pandemic

[Alexander Seinfeld]

So a pack a day to keep the virus away?

It’s an intriguing claim; however, there are numerous reasons to be
skeptical of such studies. Here are a few:

1. They are finding correlations between smoking and hospitalization, not
death rates. AFAIK, there is no study that shows that smokers are less
likely to die from covid-19.
2. The data may be completely unreliable. Does every hospital record
accurately whether covid-19 patients are current smokers? We have no idea.
What about all the people who die from it at home? These studies don’t
include them.
3. You can find studies to support almost any theory. Lot of bad science out
there. In this case, with multiple variables on both the host (human) and
virus (its effects on the body) it’s quite complicated. The first step is to
establish the veracity of the correlation, meaning the data must be
rigorously vetted. If the correlation does hold, then they have to find out
what is the cause. It may have nothing to do with smoking. Moreover, there
are other correlations that show smokers at greater risk.
4. Even if smoking does increase ACE-2 receptors (as this theory claims), it
has so many other deleterious effects on the body that the person who is
hospitalized likely has greater risks for death. If you read what they are
saying about how the virus affects the body, it’s not limited to the lungs,
it has multiple paths to disable or kill a person.
5. If smoking does ironically help in some way, how much smoking? Is there a
difference between a daily cigarette or two v. a chain-smoker? These studies
have not (and cannot) differentiate.

Therefore, if your point is that “smokers” should remain on the side of
theory and not fact, I accept the correction. But from what I’ve read, most
doctors and researchers believe it to be true.

If there is a real cause-effect here, I suspect that it may be like this:
smoking may ironically lower a person’s chance for initial infection, but
once infected, increase their chance of death.


> Actually, a number of studies show that smokers are markedly less affected by
> this virus than non-smokers.
> 
> On Tue, 28 Apr 2020 at 11:16, Alexander Seinfeld via Avodah
> <avodah at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Facts: 
>> 
>>  The death rate among the obese, sedentary, smokers etc is far, far higher
>> than the thin, active non-smokers.
>> 
>> 
>> 


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