5 ms·
Hypothesis: if you have any pre-existing lung conditions, you are more likely to quit smoking. In other words, if you're the sort with pre-existing conditions
by rossdavidh 7y ago
Hypothesis: if you have any pre-existing lung conditions, you are more likely to quit smoking. In other words, if you're the sort with pre-existing conditions that make you more likely to be hospitalized if you get Covid-19, then you would be more likely to have quit smoking (or died before now if you didn't).
Still an interesting result, but not, needless to say, a reason to start smoking.
- snikeris 7y agoI find it interesting that smoking itself isn't a pre-existing condition that makes you more likely to be hospitalized if you get Covid-19.
- rossdavidh 7y agoSame here, although I already suspected it based on the fact that Japan's death total is very low; smoking is more prevalent in Japan than most advanced economies, I believe.
- justizin 7y agoengaging in a risk factor is not a condition.
- locusofself 7y agoI'd say being addicted is a condition of sorts
- greggturkington 7y agoa history of smoking is a condition
- zxexz 7y agoDepends on what you mean as a "condition". In a medical record, smoking status is often stored as a top-level value tied directly to the patient, and also often coded into their condition list[0]. In the FHIR standard, a physician's observation of a patient's smoking history is usually represented with an observation resource, but often will be "upgraded" to a condition resource[1]. But, yeah, from a non-healthcare data standpoint, what a "condition" is really just depends on your definition. [0] https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/F01-F99/F10-F19/F17-/F17.210 https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/F01-F99/F10-F19/F17-... [1] https://www.hl7.org/fhir/condition.html https://www.hl7.org/fhir/condition.html
- 013a 7y agoIs obesity a condition? How about "engaging in overeating"?
- ajross 7y agoIt's important to be careful here: the finding above is with symptomatic covid, not hospitalization. We don't know whether or not it makes you more likely to be hospitalized.
- tutuca 7y agoOr that you disregard some symptoms as normal because your smoking habit: coughing, dry throat, etc.
- ajross 7y agoRight, or that there's some other confounding factor that leads smokers to be less likely to contract the disease or seek treatment. This kind of science (teasing data out of uncontrolled sampling) is really hard.
- evancox100 7y agoI believe they raised and tried to address this confounding factor by determining whether or not one is a smoker based on a date prior to COVID-19 hitting. But I only skimmed it, so can’t be sure what they did.