No evidence of that there. Only that "current smokers were 80% more likely to be admitted to hospital and significantly more likely to die from Covid-19 if they became infected" -- did they control for other factors, that tend to go along with smoking, like obesity (and socioeconomic status)? Where's the link to their paper?

All the genetic stuff too is super suspicious, I would be _shocked_ if "genetic predisposition to smoking" had no impact whatsoever on any other variable that could cause more severe COVID.

Here's some actual studies:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33420786/

> We conducted a cross-sectional, observational study on the 1769 sailors of the same navy aircraft carrier at sea exposed at the same time to SARS-CoV2 to investigate the link between tobacco consumption and Covid-19.

> Current smoking status was associated with a lower risk of developing Covid-19 but cannot be considered as efficient protection against infection. The mechanism of the lower susceptibility of smokers to SARS-CoV-2 requires further research.

https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...

> A total of 7162 patients were included, with 482 being smokers. The POR was 0.24 (95%CI 0.19–0.30). Unlike the original study, the association between smoking and disease severity was not statistically significant using random-effects meta-analysis (OR 1.40, 95%CI 0.98–1.98). In agreement with the original study, no statistically significant association was found between smoking and mortality (OR 1.86, 95%CI 0.88–3.94).

> An unusually low prevalence of smoking, approximately 1/4th the expected prevalence, was observed among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Any association between smoking and COVID-19 severity cannot be generalized but should refer to the seemingly low proportion of smokers who develop severe COVID-19 that requires hospitalization. Smokers should be advised to quit due to long-term health risks, but pharmaceutical nicotine or other nicotinic cholinergic agonists should be explored as potential therapeutic options, based on a recently presented hypothesis.