Covid and Pipe Smoking

[John_B]

So last weekend my partner and my daughter both tested positive for Covid. I thought I'd dodged the bullet for a couple of days but I succumbed as well. I have decided to keep smoking my customary evening pipe as so far I have remained less affected, having had a recent booster jab. My sense of taste was partly affected yesterday, but today is a better day. I smoked some Capstan Blue last night and tonights pipe du jour is going to be Kriswill Classic Navy. I'm hoping the added Perique helps me focus on the taste as I seem to have no problem with sour and sweet fruity flavours. What has been your experience of smoking with covid ? Did you take a break or muscle through it ?

 

[EchoPlex]

I had Covid a couple weeks ago and it obliterated my olfactory (anosmia). Smell/taste are slowly returning, but cigars and pipe tobacco taste terrible. It is really depressing. I'm currently doing "smell training" and taking some supplements which have show some anecdotal promise in helping to heal those cells, but I think it may be a long time before tobacco tastes good, and it may just never be the same for me. Let us know how things go with your experiences.

 

[nathaniel]

Either go by CDC recommendations altogether or don't. They either know what's best or they don't.

People get boosted because the CDC told them its dangerous not to. Have you read what they've said about smoking (regardless of covid)?

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I don't smoke, when I can't taste. Tasting is the reason I smoke. That said, I never lost my sense of taste with any of the times I had covid. But, I have lost my sense of taste when I have had pneumonia, years before covid.
Godspeed on recovery.

 

[bullet08]

I smoke just to make sure I'm alive. COVID didn't have a chance. Mainly body ache was all.

 

[John_B]

Thanks for the quick replies and good wishes. I am almost asymptomatic and have had far worse colds. It is my second bout of Covid and despite being careful it has come from my daughters Infant School. I also smoke to relax, so will try again tonight. I will report here afterwards.

 

[VDL_Piper]

I'm the same as Cosmic, smoke for the flavours and nothing else. As for covid.............I've not had it, didn't need a needle either as my immune system seems to work just fine but that's probably got something to do with the fact that I don't like people and trespassers taste like chicken.......

 

[sardonicus87]

It's hard to say. I thought I caught COVID about a month ago because my wife had it, which is odd because not only do I rarely get sick, for some reason my wife never catches anything I get and I never catch anything she gets (we theorize I am an alien). Turned out I just had a 24 hour stomach bug coincidentally at the same time as an uptick in hay fever and coincidentally around 7 days after I got exposed to her. And my taste was only briefly off due to stomach contents becoming nose contents.

Anyway, not everyone's affected the same way. If you smoke and it tastes bad, then don't smoke anymore until you're done; if everything tastes OK or you get something that does taste fine, have at it?

Like others replying before me, I smoke for flavor and relaxation. Personally, if the flavor isn't there, I am not smoking the pipe, I'll just stick to the cigarettes for my nicotine addiction. If you smoke a pipe for nicotine and it tastes like crap, maybe lay off and use nicotine patches for a while. I bought a whole box of 21mg patches back when we travelled a lot and flew since Atlanta is one of the only airports left with a fishbowl, because there were long periods I couldn't have a cigarette. The craving will be there still, but the patches help to ease it a bit.

It's all a personal choice, only you can make that call.

 

[proteus]

Get well soon...smoke it if you got it. I think tobacco smoke will kill those little critters anyway.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

I was down for a month and took a year to get back smell and taste and stamina - pipes weren’t on the radar screen for a long time.

 

[quietlife]

A required test told me I had covid once a couple years ago, I didn't change a thing. Still smoked a couple times a day. Taste and smell were as affected as they would be with any other cold. No jab here either and haven't caught it since. Keep smoking to relax and relieve stress! Maybe aim for a cool burning tobacco?!
Hope all gets well!

 

[John_B]

It's hard to say. I thought I caught COVID about a month ago because my wife had it, which is odd because not only do I rarely get sick, for some reason my wife never catches anything I get and I never catch anything she gets (we theorize I am an alien). Turned out I just had a 24 hour stomach bug coincidentally at the same time as an uptick in hay fever and coincidentally around 7 days after I got exposed to her. And my taste was only briefly off due to stomach contents becoming nose contents.

Anyway, not everyone's affected the same way. If you smoke and it tastes bad, then don't smoke anymore until you're done; if everything tastes OK or you get something that does taste fine, have at it?

Like others replying before me, I smoke for flavor and relaxation. Personally, if the flavor isn't there, I am not smoking the pipe, I'll just stick to the cigarettes for my nicotine addiction. If you smoke a pipe for nicotine and it tastes like crap, maybe lay off and use nicotine patches for a while. I bought a whole box of 21mg patches back when we travelled a lot and flew since Atlanta is one of the only airports left with a fishbowl, because there were long periods I couldn't have a cigarette. The craving will be there still, but the patches help to ease it a bit.

It's all a personal choice, only you can make that call.

I gave up cigarettes about 6 years ago. I also smoke for taste and although I have a fair tolerance for nicotine, that is not the primary reason why I like a pipe. Now off to the smoking lounge (shed) so I will hopefully have an hour (ish) of me time and hopefully be able to taste. No cough and airways clear, so retrohaling should bring out some flavour.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Had a zero symptom case of it in January so I smoked as usual.

 

[mso489]

I don't smoke through health issues on the basis that nicotine constricts capillaries (the smallest blood vessels) and could impede healing. For a while, I wondered if nicotine or another aspect of pipe smoke warded off the virus, but I wouldn't try to sell that idea to anyone else.

Between my wife and I, we have a long list of vulnerabilities so we do the shots and hope for the best. Though I have heard from one of the medical elders who developed the vaccines and said she didn't take them, specifically the flu shot.

In the Navy, I got inoculated so many times for diseases common and rare, being alarmed about taking vaccines seems incongruous for me. Everyone goes by their lived experience.

On one day in basic training, the Company Commander (like drill instructor) started passing out sugar cubes, thinking they were rewards for getting yet another shot. A corpsman quietly advised him that those were the sugar cubes used to give the polio vaccine orally. Oops.

 

[John_B]

Well I'm about 10 minutes in and I have chosen Kriswill blue because it is a cool smoking blend with plenty flavour going on. Don't want to fry my tongue chasing after taste. It is in a falcon and so far I can taste the sweetness of the Virginia, but no zing from Perique on retrohale. Ironically I can smell some of the room note. I guess I'm getting about 60% of the usual experience. Not an entirely wasted exercise, but more of a scientific analysis of how I am affected.

 

[Piping Abe]

I find it annoying to smoke when I lose my taste. The election wave is in full effect.

 

[Lucashly]

Well I'm about 10 minutes in and I have chosen Kriswill blue because it is a cool smoking blend with plenty flavour going on. Don't want to fry my tongue chasing after taste. It is in a falcon and so far I can taste the sweetness of the Virginia, but no zing from Perique on retrohale. Ironically I can smell some of the room note. I guess I'm getting about 60% of the usual experience. Not an entirely wasted exercise, but more of a scientific analysis of how I am affected.

Covid infections are not unlike any other URI. It typically affects taste not just tobacco but food in general. This not unique to Covid.

 

[didimauw]

So last weekend my partner and my daughter both tested positive for Covid. I thought I'd dodged the bullet for a couple of days but I succumbed as well. I have decided to keep smoking my customary evening pipe as so far I have remained less affected, having had a recent booster jab. My sense of taste was partly affected yesterday, but today is a better day. I smoked some Capstan Blue last night and tonights pipe du jour is going to be Kriswill Classic Navy. I'm hoping the added Perique helps me focus on the taste as I seem to have no problem with sour and sweet fruity flavours. What has been your experience of smoking with covid ? Did you take a break or muscle through it ?

For me it was like a slight head cold. I powered through it, smoking as often as I wanted!

 

[Briar Lee]

I’ve got all my vaccines and if I’ve had Covid it was asymptomatic.

We have about 18,000 people in our county:

—-

• Since the beginning of the pandemic, a total of 4,403 cases have been reported.
• Since the beginning of the pandemic, at least 1 in 265 residents have died of Covid-19, a total of 61 reported deaths.

——

When vaccines became available we had 22 deaths.

Since then 100% of deaths were unvaccinated but we only have a 34% vaccination rate..

Others can do what they like but I’m too damned scared of dying on a ventilator like over sixty of my friends have to not get boosted.

I’m getting all the other shots they offer too, like flu, shingles, and RSV.

If they had RSV when I was a kid they didn’t talk about it any.

I wonder if RSV was the whooping cough?

 

[woodsroad]

So last weekend my partner and my daughter both tested positive for Covid. I thought I'd dodged the bullet for a couple of days but I succumbed as well. I have decided to keep smoking my customary evening pipe as so far I have remained less affected, having had a recent booster jab. My sense of taste was partly affected yesterday, but today is a better day. I smoked some Capstan Blue last night and tonights pipe du jour is going to be Kriswill Classic Navy. I'm hoping the added Perique helps me focus on the taste as I seem to have no problem with sour and sweet fruity flavours. What has been your experience of smoking with covid ? Did you take a break or muscle through it ?

I am now on my third COVID adventure. Each time, I abstained from the pipe until I was completely recovered. Not a big deal. Be kind to yourself.