Vaccines, Seen and Unseen
The treatments for COVID-19 keep coming. First it was hydroxychloriquine, then it was remdesivir, then it was bleach. Each has its problems. Hydroxychloriquine, which was fairly effective at treating SARS, a different coronavirus, has proven to have neutral-to-bad outcomes for COVID patients. Remdesivir, which has proven to only shorten recovery time at this point, is apparently identical to a drug lonely white women have been spending thousands of dollars in the Chinese black market on to prolong the lives of their cats. Bleach, which is fucking bleach, shouldn't be consumed. The latest COVID-19 treatment is good, old fashioned cigarettes, known for their promotion of good health.
A few weeks ago (or maybe it was months), I wrote in this newsletter that men were dying at higher rates of COVID than women in part because we smoke more and therefore presumably have weaker lungs. However, as we gather more data about coronavirus patients, governments are finding that those with severe symptoms rarely include smokers. 25% of French people smoke but only 5% of French COVID patients are daily smokers. Other countries saw different ratios but everyone, including America and China, found significantly few smokers among patients who need hospitalization for COVID. Underrepresentation of smokers is one of the few things COVID wards and ultramarathon groups have in common.
Why is this? Science tells us that smokers must be getting the disease but that there could possibly be something in nicotine that is blocking SARS-COV-2 from taking hold. Nicotine is already used to treat inflamed bowels so there's some thinking that smoking helps COVID sufferers keep their symptoms mild, which explains why they aren't showing up in hospitals. The French are actively studying the phenomenon because there's nothing they would like more than to have a medical reason to keep firing up heaters during this time.
Before you reach for your pack of Lucky's be warned that while there may be some benefits of smoking in regards to COVID, there is an ocean of evidence that smoking will absolutely kill you in just about every other way. In fact, one of the theories about smoking's effectiveness against coronaviruses is that nicotine is already doing such a number on ACE2, the cell-membrane protein that viruses attach to to gain access to cells, that COVID-19 can't gain access to the cells. I'm calling this phenomenon the Burns Door strategy of health. Smoking, of course, is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States and looks poised to retain the title, despite the president's best efforts. 1.3 billion people in the world are regular smokers. Half of them will be killed by tobacco, a rate that is just a smidge higher than the COVID-19 death rate of 1.3%.
People have been smoking tobacco for two thousand years but it wasn't until the 1940s that doctors started taking seriously that ingesting tar into the lungs might have adverse health effects. Back then, smoking was touted for its medical benefits with ads promoting cigarettes that were "doctor recommended." Granted, these weren't real doctors (one ad shows a penguin wearing a stethoscope named "Doctor Kool") but cigs were pushed for easing headaches, throat dryness and the crippling ennui of a sham marriage to a workaholic that leaves you to raise the kids every damn day. Many still agree it's effective in treating that last one.
Even when its dangers were known it was still acceptable enough to smoke in the 1960s that the starting quarterback of a professional football team could sneak a dart during halftime of the Super Bowl. Jim Leyland, who won a World Series and two American League pennants over a managerial career of 30 years and 4 teams, smoked prodigiously in the dugout into the 2010s. He once was asked about it on live television and said, after dutifully mentioning how smoking was bad for you, "Still. Smokers out there, you know what I'm talking about. That moment, after you've had a huge meal, say at Thanksgiving, when you step outside in the cold, light up a cigarette and take a deep inhale...that's about the best moment in the world, you know? All the smokers out there, you know that feeling. Sometimes, smoking is fantastic."
So, is 2020 that sometimes? Should we light up to protect ourselves from COVID? Doing so would be counterintuitive reason to the evolutionary reason we smoke in the first place, knowing as we do that it's bad for us. To quote a different baseball manager, "nice guys finish last," and when it comes to evolution, "cautious guys die out." There is something attractive to us about people who are so unafraid of death they actually court it, from hunters who took on wild game as opposed to cultivating boring, old vegetables to a person so brazen they actively buy and consume products that are designed to kill them. This is a crazy species we belong to.
Considering that it took 19 centuries for humanity to realize that cigarettes are bad for us, it should be no surprise that it has taken as long as it has to develop an effective COVID-19 treatment. The latest dangerous proposal is setting up a system of "immunity passports" for people who have recovered from the disease, letting them go back to life as normal. The assumption is that people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and have recovered are immune, as that is how it works with other infections. However, there is no evidence yet that this is how it works with this virus. We all know the saying about what happens when we assume, in this case it makes an ass mostly out of Grandma, who we had to bury because we let people out too early. I know the wait for treatment is frustrating, there's a thought among the "liberate" people that the rest of us are enjoying wearing masks and staying at home, we're not. My wife is going to have a baby girl in five weeks and it's looking less and less like many people will be able to visit her for some time—believe me I want this over as much as anyone. But I can't condone taking shots in the dark on unproven assumptions. Courting danger may be an evolutionary trait, but even it has its limits.