Smoking and COVID-19 again

a reply to: zatara

Yes I did

Rainbows
Jane

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: dug88

Not only does smoking make me look cool, it's saved me from the Chinese Koff-Koff?

Pfft, you'll never look as cool as me pretending to be a Hobbit, though. Or a refined English person.




Yeah, more like pretending to be refined...

originally posted by: angelchemuel
a reply to: anonentity

I hail from a very rural area, even more rural way back when. Anyways, I remember a very long time ago an 'oldie' telling me when winter colds and such were 'doing the rounds' they would start dishing out cigarettes to the younger children to smoke to prevent them getting ill! I was gobsmacked back then, the late '70's when I was told the story, as all you heard then was how bad smoking is for you. He claimed it worked.
I guess when you have smaller communities people can work things out for themselves by just observing and trying.

Rainbows
Jane

Both my parents shared that story with me. They said smoking helped keep you healthy.
This was also when the government used to put cigarettes in rations.

a reply to: angelchemuel

I quit buying commercial cigarettes a long time ago and started rolling my own. It costs about a buck a pack to roll the twenty cigarettes. That price includes the filters. I have found one brand of tobacco that does not bother my breathing, a more natural one which runs about a buck a pound more than the other ones. I smoke about ten cigarettes a day....half way down...and it does not effect my lungs much at all. The closer the flame gets to the filter, the more it breaks down. At a buck a pack, a pack lasts two days and I have lots of long butts left over, I waste half of the tobacco...so I waste twenty five cents a day in tobacco. Out of the pound bag, I get two cartons of cigarettes plus maybe a pack and a half which comes out to twenty one bucks in tax. I know the manager of the tobacco store and she orders in tobacco special for me, they do not stock that, and it is 15.49 for a pound and filters run 1.99 a carton, plus there is tax. So it costs close to ten bucks a carton.

In the stores that sell that brand in stock it costs two bucks more a pound, but I chat with the manager of that store all the time when I go in there, they make most of their money on vaping products there. If they didn't sell lots of vape stuff, they would have to jack up the price of tobacco. Although, I am getting the tobacco special order, one lb bag a month about, so I am not abusing it.

If you don't smoke much, and you don't smoke down too close to the filter, it is not nearly as harmful. The data on it's danger is from smoking over a pack a day and smoking the cigarrete almost to nothing. And it is true, there are chemicals in the filter, and even in the paper tube that are dangerous, and that fire suppressant chemical they put in cigarettes so they go out if you put it in the ashtray, which doesn't even work, is also bad for you. That chemical makes you have to smoke more puffs so the cigarette doesn't go out, you cannot just relax with it. And most times it goes out in your fingers and needs relighting, but when you put it in the ashtray it keeps burning...kind of backwards if you ask me. It is probably that they want to inconvenience smokers so they quit.

Very off topic, but to be on topic, tobacco is a medicine and we should not be overusing it because all medicinal chemistries can be bad for you if overused. You probably already know that in your work.

I remember hearing or seeing some program where it was said that an old farmer used to spit his chewing tobacco into the dog’s water bowl, “to prevent worms from living in his gut”. If this is true, it could also mean there’s more to other claims about existing medicine, like Ivermectin for instance.

All I can say is, my son (15 yr) and I (56) have been tested positive a couple of months ago, and we both suffered very mild symptoms, I had even less symptoms, while having multiple underlying physical problems (obesity not being one of them however). So honestly, I don’t trust what comes from the government and the media....

All very fascinating, especially considering that South Africa was one of the few countries to enforce a ban (effectively a prohibition) on the sale of all tobacco products for several months last year.
However, far from deterring most smokers this simply boosted all kinds of new brands at unbelievably inflated black market prices, leading to many conspiracies that need further investigation.

However, I also think that smokers were more likely to socially distance because of myriad anti-smoking laws already existing when Covid first spread.

That is, more smokers were likely to be in less crowded, more ventilated or outdoor spaces, more social distancing due to "distasteful" tobacco breath and clinging smells to non-smokers, and also more inclined to hand-washing to hide smelly fingers.
There could be social/spatial factors along with medical factors that protected some smokers.

Sometimes it pays to be "anti-social".

smoking as i type this. not dead yet. will update.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Now see, I had my last cigarette on February 8, 2020...and the rest of the world had the freak out soon after. Just two weeks...which trivia note: that was the phrase Arnold Schwarzenegger’s robot disguise was hung up on in Total Recall...coincidence?

originally posted by: GravitySucks

originally posted by: Wide-Eyes

originally posted by: GravitySucks
Didn't one of the treatments for Ebola have tobacco in it?

Apparently so!

Ebola Tobacco Time

Tobacco kills but it makes sure it kills everything else before you.

It's not the nicotine or tobacco that kills. It's all the other poisonous things they add to cigs.

Good point!

These warning tags might as well just have a picture of the Grim Reaper.

It would be far more honest.

*Lights up cigarette*

👀🚬

a reply to: Ahabstar

I thought Arnold's jaw was just too massive to fit the robot disguise.

originally posted by: zatara
a reply to: angelchemuel

Maybe little off topic but..did you know that the first filters in cigarettes were made of asbestos..? Can you believe it.. at the time they didnt know how harmful asbestos is. Anyways, I am from the netherlands and it is very common that people roll their own cigarrettes without any filter. It would be an interesting study to see what the effect of smoking cigarettes will have on this covid virus...and what substance is responsible for not getting infected.

While I do believe smoking isn't a healthy habit, I have also long believed that asbestos is the real culprit behind the spike in lung cancer in the US late 80s into the 90s. Not just old school cigarette filter asbestos, but the 80s and 90s are when cities began the arduous process of removing asbestos from large buildings and a LOT of smaller scale demo and construction involved demo of buildings with asbestos and that dust went airborne. We all know governments NEED scapegoats and those scapegoats must be an industry which can become the target of public anger without negatively impacting government plans. Had the asbestos been the primary boogeyman, it would have opened up lawsuits against governments for not properly testing asbestos in the first place and not properly removing it or more closely monitoring that removal, allowing millions of people to breathe it in as plain old ordinary dust. (not to mention road dust from brakes that used to be a common component of urban air pollution... per the EPA's own requirements and mandates, that pollutant was squarely on the shoulders of the cities and authorities over the roadways, dust palliative measures (EPA Regulation on fugitive particles )

Simply put, the government threw the tobacco industry under the bus because they will do whatever it takes to avoid their own asses being exposed for the worthless, predatory cluster of chuckleheads they are.

originally posted by: Ahabstar
a reply to: DBCowboy

Now see, I had my last cigarette on February 8, 2020...and the rest of the world had the freak out soon after. Just two weeks...which trivia note: that was the phrase Arnold Schwarzenegger’s robot disguise was hung up on in Total Recall...coincidence?

I'm going to start smoking masks.

I want to see fauci's head explode.

a reply to: 2Faced

Yep. When I was a kid we'd toss chaw to the Blue Heelers and they never got worms at all. (and yeah, I mean "kid" I started chewing Red Man at 10 and was dipping Copenhagen at 12... the joys of growing up in the rural sticks in the 90s, ya?)

originally posted by: 2Faced
I remember hearing or seeing some program where it was said that an old farmer used to spit his chewing tobacco into the dog’s water bowl, “to prevent worms from living in his gut”. If this is true, it could also mean there’s more to other claims about existing medicine, like Ivermectin for instance.

Sharp observation. Could be something to that.

Brought back a memory: My grandma was an awesome mountain gal who dipped snuff and could ring a spittoon from 6 or 7 feet. I was pretty proud...none of my city friends grannies could do that.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I said from the get go that indoor smoking was on again because the masks would protect them.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I said from the get go that indoor smoking was on again because the masks would protect them.