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Comment by 8bitsrule | Hacker News Reader

I recall someone on HN mentioning how smoking inhibits production of ACE2 proteins on this forum at least a year ago. Also recall a French study noting the -significantly- lower number of smokers showing up with Covid, at about the same time. Hopefully this phenomenon leads to more preventives.

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At least one study making such a claim was retracted for not disclosing the authors’ financial ties to the tobacco industry.

https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/57/3/2002144

Knowing the industry is secretly pushing favorable coverage, I’m treating claims like this with more skepticism.

What are your thoughts on the Pharmaceuticals Industry’s ties to the Democrat Party?

Netflix is owned by tobacco industry, no secrets here.

I always thought the most likely explanation of the French findings was that smokers were more likely to be outside (smoking), and thus got the disease less than those sitting inside in less well-ventilated places.

Speaking as a smoker, respiratory illness hitting us less is definitely not generally the case ;)

Also speaking as a smoker, it may protect you from accidental exposure to covid, but not when sharing an office or bed with someone who has it. Source: personal experience of getting it from the missus who got it from work.

Oh definitely. I think that I may have had it near the start of the pandemic (fatigue/flu like symptoms for a few weeks) but my wife didn't have any antibodies (but I did wear a mask everywhere for the first while I had symptoms).

It's a very odd disease in terms of spread, there's super high variance in transmissibility.

For some it's the exact opposite, the, are forced to meet up in small 'badly' ventilated rooms to have their cig.

Even twenty years ago, nicotine was so vilified (for good reason probally) scientists didn't do non-biased studies.

I remember Dr. Dean Edell always yacking about this.

(antidotally--I have know smokers, who didn't eat much, never seemed to get sick. My best friend of twenty years never got sick. I used to say, you smoke 4-5 packs/day. I don't get it. I even had him go in to check his Coronary arteries because I just assumed the worse. His arteries were clean. He practiced calorie restriction, but not on purpose. He just didn't eat much. And yes--at that much tobacco, how do you eat? He made it to 65. He died do to smoking. His lungs finally gave up one night. Now--smokers who ate a lot seemed like they were always sick.)

Nicotine is a strong appetite suppressant.

With cigarettes, I don't think the worst aspect is nicotine but everything else like tar, burning material, etc.

Nicotine itself is pretty similar to caffeine.

Likely the worst component of cigarettes is Polonium 210. This apparently comes from phosphorus rich fertilizers.

This is quite an interesting rabbit hole to jump into.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pubmed+polonium+tobacco

One of the more interesting ones: “Waking a Sleeping Giant: The Tobacco Industry’s Response to the Polonium-210 Issue“

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509609/

My hot take: Tobacco seems like the most important product to consume from “organic” growers.

Yep.

And a lot of this is made worse by using mined phosphate fertilizers which are formed geologically such that transuranic daughter elements are concentrated into the phosphate. Tobacco itself also concentrates them.

Nicotine also has nootropic effects (just like amphetamine and cocaine).

This is why vaping may actually be a good alternative.

It's just nicotine and food-grade VG/PG/flavor.

The "vaping lung" illnesses seemed to center around THC vape oil made from Vitamin E acetate which caused the damage. Not nicotine vapes.

This is in the case of smoking/nicotine, I am unsure about any ACE2 binding interaction with regards to Covid-19.

People who are particular about what they put in their bodies should note, you almost never know the details of what is in the flavors. Vaping pure VG+nicotine or VG+PG+nicotine is extremely safe if the nicotine is at normal doses. Flavors are probably mostly safe, but you don't know for sure. Nicotine itself is highly toxic (contact, even on skin, with 0.5mg per pound of body weight is lethal). Also inhaling heated glycerin vapor is not good for you, it doesn't cause anything remotely resembling what cigarettes do and thus far is not thought to cause any long term illness. PG is used in asthma inhalers, although not heated, so that should give you some idea of how inert these compounds are in your lungs.

The most dangerous aspect of vaping IMO is the content of the metals used to make the heating coils. Currently I'm not aware of any sort of assurance that manufacturers can give as to where they source coil wire, and if you make your own coils you should do it with wire that you know is inert when heated, which isn't as easy as it sounds. Two materials used for coils, Nickel Chromium alloy and Titanium, are known to release toxic oxides when heated too much, but these aren't very popular, and 2 other alloys that are common, Kanthal A1 and stainless steel are inert when heated so long as they're made of what they're supposed to be made of and have no impurities.

Do agree - the lesser damage is definitely vaping.

And Pareto -ranked risk analysis should be the ONLY way to decide such things.

The societal veto is "Yeah, we want cars despite being highly Pareto-ranked for death!" in which case NOTHING with lower rank should be worried about or allowed to be regulated more than what is spent on that particular risk!

I wonder if this is purely from combusting tobacco or if marijuana could have a similar effect.

When I used to smoke, I seldom got sick. When I quit, i’ve been sick a lot more. I’m not sure this is just protection against COVID, either way the outcome is death, probably best to try your luck with COVID.

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