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If you vape, you are upping the ante for your risk of coming down with COVID-19, health officials are reporting. As per Dr. Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir a pediatric pulmonologist who spoke with The New York Times: “It is quite clear that smoking and vaping are bad for the lungs, and the predominant symptoms of Covid are respiratory. Those two things are going to be bad in combination.”
Likening it to coming down with influenza, Lovinsky-Desir said it’s well-known that smokers are more likely to end up in the hospital with flu than nonsmokers. Likewise, vapers who get COVID are already suffering from vaping-related damage to their lungs and also more likely to be hit harder if they get COVID — as a recent study of 4,351 young people ages 13 to 24 showed. In fact, COVID-19 diagnosis was five times more likely among ever-users of e-cigarettes only.
This is an especially important warning to young people, as nearly 5 million middle and high school youth reported using e-cigarettes, according to a 2019 study in the medical journal JAMA.
SOURCES:
The New York Times September 4, 2020
JAMA November 5, 2019
Science Direct August 11, 2020