Conducted by the Mayo Clinic, the study titled “Electronic Cigarette Use Is Not Associated with COVID-19 Diagnosis” involved nearly 70,000 patients, and concluded that e-cigarettes “do not appear to increase susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
“For over a year, we’ve had to endure WHO’s latest round of orchestrated lies about vaping. Outrageously, various WHO briefings and materials on COVID have stated that ‘e-cigarette use may increase the risk of infection’, without offering any scientific basis whatsoever,” said Executive Coordinator of the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) Nancy Loucas in response to the findings.
She added that thankfully, trusted media sources have given the Mayo Clinic study some visibility. “Thankfully, credible, trusted media sources such as Forbes have given this latest Mayo Clinic study the credit it’s due, headlining ‘No, Vaping Doesn’t Make You More Susceptible To Coronavirus’. Good on Forbes for profiling the evidence, not profiting from all the emotion.”
Nicotine may act as a protective factor against the virus
Loucas highlighted that contrary to the WHO claims, a number of studies have indicated that actually nicotine may act as a protective factor against contracting the virus. A study conducted in a large French university hospital, between March and April 2020, aimed to determine the possible correlation of daily smoking, with the susceptibility of contracting the SARS-CoV-2 infection.
The researchers had estimated the rates of daily current smokers among COVID-19-infected patients and compared them to the rates of daily current smokers within the general French population, after controlling the data for sex and age.
The compiled data had indicated that the daily smokers’ rate amongst COVID-19 patients was at 5.3%, whilst within the general French population, the rate of daily smokers rate was of 25.4%. These findings had led to the conclusion that daily smokers have a significantly lower probability of developing symptomatic or a severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, when compared to the general population.
In line with this, renowned anti-smoking researcher Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos and two colleagues, analyzed data coming out of China, where it was widely speculated that the higher hospitalization and death rates among Chinese men was due to gender differences in smoking rates. However, Farsalinos found that there were significantly less smokers among hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
Smoking not associated with an increased risk of contracting COVID
Similarly, another review of the Chinese data published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine concluded that “active smoking does not apparently seem to be significantly associated with enhanced risk of progressing towards severe disease in COVID-19.”
Subsequently, similar patterns started emerging from around the world. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have shown that smokers represented just 1.3% of COVID-19 cases analyzed, while America’s adult smoking rate is at 13.7%.
University of Waterloo: COVID-19 Didn’t Spark More Smoking During Its Initial Stages
