Bad Habits... Are They Deadly?
Beginning in 2020, the Covid-19 virus spread through the world killing millions of people. This global pandemic continues to take lives even two years later, specifically from individuals with immunocompromised systems. People with existing health conditions or those of old age suffered most in the pandemic, but they weren’t the only ones that died. According to the CDC, 6.63 million people have died since the start of the pandemic back in 2020 which makes it clear that people of all ages and all health levels are being affected by this virus. The amount of death rates fluctuate immensely as the public continues to get vaccinated and better protect themselves. However according to the CDC, as of November 2022 approximately 1,300 people still die every week around the world due to the Coronavirus.
Looking at these statistics, how can we better understand the types of people that are dying from the pandemic? We know that millions die of cancer every year, and some of the leading causes of cancer include smoking cigarettes, exposure to sun, obesity and excessive alcohol. All of these causes are preventable acts that the majority of people chose to indulge in on their own free will. Are the type people who are dying from cancer each year the same as those who have died from Covid-19?
Everyone has bad habits and most people even partake in certain things knowing it’s not good for them. Whether it be consuming processed sugars, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, consuming drugs, lack of exercise, indulging in fast food, almost everyone has at least one thing that they do that they know they probably shouldn’t. How do these “bad habits” impact the average person’s health while in the midst of a global pandemic? Let’s find out. I wanted to take one of these “don’ts” of life and perform a correlation test to better understand the relationship between adults who smoke and people who have died as a result of contracting the Covid-19 virus.
To my surprise, I calculated a negative correlation of -0.208 between adult smokers and deaths caused by Covid. As you can see in my graph above, the relationship between these two variables is not extremely strong. Some potential causes of this is that the average age of adult smokers in the United States are in age ranges from 25–44 and 45-64. On the contrary, the age group that was most affected by Covid-19 according to the CDC was 65+. Covid tends to affect people in higher age groups who naturally have a weaker resilience to disease, therefore the average smoking adult, even though they may be affected by diseases like lung cancer in their future, currently might have a better chance at fighting off Covid than someone 65 and over. Another reason for this negative correlation is that there is a possibility that people who smoke may not be compromised by immunodeficiency diseases. People who experience diseases that greatly impact their immune system are more likely to not intentionally partake in things to additionally damage their immune system. People who smoke may more often than not, not have a compromised immune system and therefore feel like they have more immunity to indulge in habits that can lead to future health issues.
These findings reveal that there is not a positive correlation between adults who smoke cigarettes and individuals that have died because of the coronavirus. Based on outside statistics from the CDC, as well as understanding behavior in people, we can conclude that smoking does not directly cause Covid deaths. Overall, Covid-19 was and still is a large threat to our society and indulging in any act that makes your ability to fight disease is not wise. Having a “bad habit” in the midst of a global pandemic may not directly cause death, but it sure doesn’t help.
