Coronavirus UK: Is David Hockney right about effect of smoking?

When times are grim, we tend to cling for dear life to anything that offers even the faintest glimmer of hope. So it is that for me — and for countless other cigarette addicts — the most cheering read of the week was David Hockney’s letter to the Mail, in which he suggested that our disgusting habit may just possibly afford us some degree of protection from Covid-19. 

‘Could it not be,’ wrote our greatest living artist and patron saint of chainsmokers, ‘that smokers have developed an immune system to this virus? 

‘With all these figures coming out, it’s beginning to look like that to me.’ Of course, the 82-year-old Hockney — a smoker for 60 years — could well be indulging in wishful thinking. The anti-smoking zealots at Public Health England cite a ‘small but highly impactful’ Chinese study which claims that we addicts are 14 times more likely to develop severe disease if we succumb to this modern plague. 

But if the great man is right — and I’m the first to admit it’s a very big If — he has highlighted one of the most surprising possibilities thrown up in the scientists’ struggle to understand how this vile virus works, and how best to beat it. 

Expensive 

It’s also the first time since I foolishly took up smoking during my gap year in France almost 50 years ago that I’ve heard anyone suggest my antisocial, unhealthy and cripplingly expensive addiction might actually be doing me some good. 

Smokers have had a terrible press since 1604, when King James I of England and VI of Scotland wrote his magnificent polemic, A Counterblaste To Tobacco. 

In words that could teach today’s internet trolls a thing or two about expressing fury, the king described smoking as ‘this filthie noveltie’. 

It was, he wrote: ‘A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.’ 

And, let’s face it, he was right. 

Yet despite the king’s rage, fools like me continued to smoke — and it was only during my lifetime, after the discovery of the indisputable link between smoking and lung cancer, that the anti-tobacco lobby began to make serious headway. 

In modern times, we smokers have become social pariahs — thrown out of offices, restaurants and pubs to satisfy our slavish craving on the streets outside in rain, hail or snow. 

Even the most charming and welcoming of dinner party hostesses now thinks it acceptable to answer a smoker’s plea with the words: ‘I’d much rather you didn’t.’ 

Either that, or she’ll make her displeasure felt by saying: ‘Yes, of course you can smoke, if you’ll just let me open a window. Oh, and I’m almost sure we have an ashtray somewhere. Just give me a few minutes to look for it.’ 

Thus, she leaves us feeling like the worms that, deep down, we know we are. At school, children have it drummed into them that smoking is an evil on a par with man-made climate change, guaranteed to destroy their health. 

Indeed, words that echo down the decades to me were spoken to one of my sons by a classmate, as they sat in the back seat of the car when I was doing the school run: ‘Your dad smokes, doesn’t he? So how come he’s not dead?’ 

Meanwhile at Budget after Budget, successive chancellors have cranked up the duty on tobacco, never failing to pull pious faces as they claim they’re thinking only of our health. 

In fact, they’re thinking only of the absolute maximum they can screw out of us without driving us to give up. 

Indeed, I well remember resolving that I’d give up when cigarette prices topped £1 for a packet of 20. 

As it turned out, they went up by so little above £1 that I kept going, thinking: ‘What difference can a few pence make?’ 

Warning 

These days, a packet of 20 Marlboro Reds costs more than £13. But pathetic addict that I am, I carry on smoking, blocking out the warnings about the harm I’m doing to myself and those around me. 

Enough to say it came as no surprise to anyone that as soon as the Covid-19 crisis broke, the anti-smoking lobby stepped up its campaign against tobacco, warning that smokers were at particular risk. 

Among the first out of the traps was the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, who said: ‘It is abundantly clear from the research into previous coronaviruses that smoking makes the impact of a coronavirus worse.’ 

To that, my only answer is that nothing is abundantly clear about Covid-19. Since there has been no mass testing in the UK, we have no idea how many of us are infected with the virus, or how many have recovered from it. We don’t know, with any degree of accuracy, our chances of survival if we get it. We don’t know how many have died because of it, rather than just with it. 

The only thing that seems more certain by the day is that those selfless people among us who are constantly exposed to the virus — front-line health workers, bus drivers and others — are more at risk than the rest of us. God bless them and keep them safe. 

Most crucially of all, we still have very little idea whether or not it’s possible to contract Covid-19 more than once, or how long immunity is likely to last (if at all) after we’ve had it for the first time. 

And here’s my point: it’s also far from abundantly clear that smokers are in greater danger than anyone else. On the contrary, as Hockney suggests, we may actually be safer — safer even than those infuriating health fanatics we see jogging around the park, panting and spreading their toxic droplets to anyone unfortunate enough to get in their way. 

I won’t go into the science, because frankly it baffles me. But the fact is that several studies conducted all over the world have found that smokers are significantly under-represented among those who have succumbed to coronavirus. 

Revolting 

In China, where more than a quarter of the population smoke, researchers found that only 6.5 per cent of those hospitalised with Covid-19 were smokers. 

In the U.S. (whose figures I trust more), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that a mere 1.3 per cent of those who have tested positive for coronavirus are smokers, though 14 per cent of America’s adult population are said to smoke. Various explanations have been offered for this. 

One, popular in the anti-tobacco lobby, is that we smokers smell so revolting that nobody wants to come within half a mile of us, never mind two metres. 

Others say doctors have either been too busy to ask patients whether or not they smoke, or that sufferers have been too sick to answer the question. 

Meanwhile, scientists struggling for an explanation suggest that nicotine may offer some protection through the way it affects the ‘ACE2 receptors’ in our lungs. 

No, don’t ask me. 

For the avoidance of doubt, I am absolutely not advising anyone to take up smoking, which is probably the stupidest thing I ever did. But if there’s even a grain of truth in Hockney’s theory, I strongly urge medics to set aside their anti-smoking prejudice and examine precisely how nicotine may act to combat the virus. 

That way — who knows? — they may come up with the elusive treatment we all yearn for. 

As for myself, I’ll carry on puffing away through the lockdown, hoping along with Hockney that in some mysterious way, our unhealthy addiction may protect us. 

I only pray that the words I’ve just written won’t be filed, all too literally, under the heading: ‘Famous Last Words.’