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The coronavirus is not just a threat. It is an opportunity. The COVID-19 pandemic offers every smoker and vaper with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to quit: a wake-up call.

The novel virus causes a respiratory disease that is worse with lungs that are already vulnerable, whether because of age or disease. Lungs are also made vulnerable by smoking and vaping.

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Recent wake-up calls began on Feb. 28 when a Chinese Medical Journal article reported that smoking increased the risk of becoming sicker by 14 times. On March 11, a Lancet article reported that more men in China were infected by the virus than women, while reminding us that Chinese men smoke at a much higher rate than women — according to the World Bank, 48 per cent of Chinese men smoke and only 1.9 per cent of women. A 2003 study of the SARS coronavirus and a 2016 study of the MERS coronavirus found that smoking was associated with the illnesses caused by the viruses.