A new epidemiology paper - the good kind of epidemiology, not the kind that says bacon is as bad for your health as plutonium or that coffee strained through a cheap paper filter increases lifespan - found that smokers get less COVID-19.

The claims were made using results from a school of 700 teachers and pupils and their families in a section of France with high levels of COVID-19. Only about 7 percent of smokers were infected while the rate among non-smokers was 400 percent higher. Obviously that's not an endorsement of smoking, smoking kills. It is, like alcohol, a known carcinogen. The benefit, the authors say, is derived from the nicotine, not the cigarettes. Smoking kills people, but nicotine does not.