I'm not taking up nicotine again to maybe get a side benefit. No way no how.

Stuff is horrible to detox from.

And frankly taking a poison to prevent a virus? Just no.

It's also far more likely that some behavior of the smokers -like going out to smoke in sunlight - thereby boosting their Vitamin D - was the preventative.

I have often wondered if there were some benefits to smoking. Tobacco use has been common over much of the world for a very long time. You’d think that if smoking has only negative results, its use would have been eliminated long ago through natural selection.

Possible benefits:

A way to keep a fire going.
A way to keep mosquitoes away.
A medicine to kill parasites in the digestive tract.

And now we learn that smoking kills viruses. Maybe the government should give everyone a free box of cigars.

I doubt that... Sounds like trump-think to me...

I wonder if niacin (nicotinic acid) would be just as effective.

[ods.od.nih.gov]