After this pandemic, doctors and scientists are going to have to come up with more media-friendly terms from now on.
The problem is that "airborne droplets" and "airborne" sound too similar and it's very hard for regular people to understand what that means. "Airborne droplets" means that viruses need saliva to transmit between people. "Airborne" means that the virus only needs dust particles to transmit to other people. Measles is airborne transmission, which means that if someone with measles enters a room, that room can be infectious for 12+ hours because viruses will be infectious in the dust. If someone with coronavirus sneezes in a room, the large heavy droplets will quickly fall to the ground. If you breathe in the droplets then you can catch the virus, but these only stay in the air for seconds. However, there are microdroplets which stay in the air for 30+ minutes depending on the air currents.
So there is a distinction between them. If coronavirus were truly airborne, then we would all need to wear masks all the time, even when no one is around. No where would be safe and we would have to implement extremely strict lockdowns.
But the fact that scientists and doctors have chosen to use the term "airborne" in both have made it extremely confusing and given how quickly information and misinformation is disseminated these days, they need to choose terms with care from now on.
> If someone with coronavirus sneezes in a room, the large heavy droplets will quickly fall to the ground.
This is the slightly incorrect part with COVID.
Traditionally, this would be an appropriate description for other droplet transmission (like the flu). However, it seems COVID has an above average ability to survive in extremely fine droplets - think mist-sized particles that CAN float in the air for an extended period of time (given the right circumstances).
This nuance is challenging to convey. For healthcare workers, it's important because it likely means standard droplet based precautions are not enough. However, it also seems that full airborne precautions (PAPR's) are overkill. My take is N95's do enough to dehumidify droplets and ultimately break down particles.
For the general public, the nuance is less important. Most don't have access to proper fitting N95 (or better) masks, so they're stuck wearing cloth or surgical masks. They should simply think of COVID as airborne because they're likely not wearing the proper gear.
> we would have to implement extremely strict lockdowns...
if we assume that the goal is not to flatten the curve but to completely stop the virus in its tracks. Most people and countries don't have this goal.
Edit: To those downvoting, I'll just say that my statement is factual, so argue the facts. Long-term, we want a vaccine, yes. In the meantime, most people and countries are simply not willing to do what it takes to completely eliminate this virus. They think it would be nice if the virus went away, but they are not working towards that as their goal.
More important would be fixing the messaging on masks and protection. (Most laymen aren't going to distinguish between droplet, aerosol, airborne, etc. and won't adjust behavior and risk profiles accordingly.)
The CDC told people that masks were not important at the start of the pandemic, largely as a means of reserving stock for doctors and first responders. They then performed an uneven and awkwardly stilted 180 on that message. This massively backfired and led to wide scale public distrust of the public health apparatus. The birth of the anti-mask movement, etc.
We'll be living with the ramifications for a long time.
This is a bit of an outdated view on Coronavirus though. The whole point is that “airborne” isn’t black and white (which is how the WHO has treated it) and is more of a spectrum. A large number of scientists have been lobbying the WHO to get them to talk about it as airborne because it’s not just heavy droplets like people thought in the beginning. And there’s real concern that viral load can build up in poorly ventilated spaces. Which is why it’s a good idea to spend as little time in closed public spaces as possible, and why Fauci suggests that if you’re someone who needs to avoid it at all costs, then goggles are probably a good idea.
I don't agree with your conclusion. Airborne is airborne regardless of whether it's 5 minutes or 12 hours. The point of the word is to tell people that you can become infected without being in direct physical contact with them. Trying to come up with words for different durations of airborne is only going to make it more confusing, even if it becomes less ambiguous to the people who know the difference between the terms.
This is why science communicators are extremely important. Technical words are great for trained professionals who understand the context. But too many people, myself included, repeat these words only partially understanding what they're intended to mean.
All of the media messaging around COVID has been a complete disaster from the moment it became apparent it was spreading in January in China. One of the main takeaways from this pandemic needs to be that doctors and experts need to learn how to say the words: "I don't know, but we are working hard to find out." Way too many people have made statements that later turned out to be false. The lack of any consistency and the complete flip-flopping on masks has completely undermined the public's willingness to trust the experts.
The article addresses this midway through. The problem is that even the experts haven't really agreed on terminology. They need to do that first before they can hope to inform the public. :)
One important point that comes out of this is that few people are stressing shoe sole hygiene. Not necessarily meaning that one has to scrub them often, but to be mindful of what it touches (car interior mats, mats at home and possibly if people don’t take off their shoes, all over the house, hands taking off shoes, shoe racks, etc.) Given that droplets mean the virus will accumulate on floors and such surfaces.
The WHOLE POINT of the article is to educate you about the difference between droplets (ballistic) and aerosols (behave like a gas).
It doesn't look like you, or the people replying to you read the article. And thats a shame, because you're exactly the type of person who the author is trying to educate.
I work at a biotech company that studies virus transmission and helps others study it. It was clear from the very beginning that transmission was airborne. Why would it not be? That the WHO and some doctors were assuming it was not seriously damages their credibility as healthcare professionals.
Current events should lead people to seriously question deference given to doctors. They need to be held accountable for their actions and must be made to listen to professionals in other fields.
I have several (medical) doctors in my family. They were pretty clear from the beginning that what the WHO was saying was BS. They pretty much agreed with what you're relating; I don't think it's doctors in general who are ignorant of how a virus gets transmitted.
I completely agree with your first point; but what we need to seriously question is the cherry-picking of sources that were paraded in front of us by the media.
> It was clear from the very beginning that transmission was airborne.
To me the only thing that was clear was the definition of airborne is not standard.
By strict definition, COVID is not airborne since it seems to require a host material (e.g. water droplet). This is in contrast to measles which individual virus particles can survive without a host material. Practically speaking though, COVID seems to be able to survive well in such small droplets that it acts like an airborne disease.
At a public health, COVID might as well be treated as airborne. Within acute care settings, this is a critical difference is being used as justification that a _properly_ fitted N95 and eye covering is sufficient to care for COVID patients. If COVID was truly airborne, all patient care should require airborne-level PPE (like PAPRs).
All professionals and experts should be held accountable for their actions: doctors are no exception. The issue with "needing to be held accountable" is that you're calling doctors a monolithic group and implying that they aren't already heavily screened and scrutinized.
Doctors are, and should be, some of the most elite minds and highly respected scientists/caregivers. Like any group, they have inter-group controversy and debate, but let's not use that to pile onto the anti-science, anti-vax, anti-medical chorus which is gaining steam on the internet. Some doctors get things wrong: most doctors, however, enact evidence-based practices which have been vetted by statisticians, chemists, and physicists who help innovate and inform medical decision-making.
As high-minded as our concerns about doctors being incorrect might be, let's keep a wide view here and not tear down a vast-majority noble and expert profession. Let's have a nuanced discussion where we admit doctors are both experts, highly select, but also people with flaws too.
Wow, what a good article. Finally an article in a well respected publication that goes over the science of the Covid19 transmission, and appears to be non-partisan as well (what a tragedy that the approach to combat the disease has become a partisan issue). I really hope this article will, dare I say, "become viral". If it does, this article by itself could help save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives.
But it won't. The reason things became "partisan" is precisely because things like the article are useless and ineffective. You're assuming a shared reality that doesn't exist.
I am still shocked: months after research has shown that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne stable in aerosol form for over 3 hours, we still aren’t telling the public that room air purifiers are a ‘good thing’ (for making indoor air like outdoor air - in regards to virion density per cubic air volume)
The filter technology is essentially the same as in the N95, orders of magnitude more effective than cloth masks.
Put these indoors, multiple per classroom/working space to help the air refresh in sub 5 minute intervals.
My wife works in a doctors office which has stayed open through the pandemic. She sees a few people a day in a small room. The very first thing she did after the pandemic hit the US, was buy an air purifier and she runs it continually. I'm quite surprised that they aren't more common in medical offices in general. The benefits of the air filter are cumulative with other protections—particles caught by the filter can't bypass the mask.
Filters should be mandatory in any enclosed room, the fact that they don't even talk about them as part of the discussion about schools and businesses opening is mind boggling to me.
the first thing I see is hot spots all across the southeast and desert southwest. These places have widely varying governments and cultures, but the one thing they do have in common right now is: they're hot.
My suspicion is that many of the outbreaks we've seen recently are caused by people from different households congregating indoors in buildings with air conditioning and closed windows. The article mentions this, but I rarely here it talked about on the news:
"The importance of aerosols may even help explain why the disease is now exploding in the southern United States, where people often go into air-conditioned spaces to avoid the sweltering heat."
This is something I currently speculate too. Hotter states really benefited from AC allowing people to live there comfortably. I think it might show us what’s coming as people move indoors in colder months elsewhere.
It’s getting harder and harder to stay away from people from a purely psychological standpoint, and I think fall is going to get bad in the PNW as people congregate indoors to stay out of the wet and cold.
My company took steps to address this months ago. The re-circulation rate was set to zero so all air is fresh make up air from outside. This has significantly increased our cooling bill since it's summer, but it was something that we felt important even though there hasn't been much science to back it up. We also have a UV system hooked up to our system, but this has been installed for the last 2-3 years now.
How does that work? Is it just a setting on industrial HVAC systems or did it require someone coming out and reconfiguring things? I’ve heard some schools are considering leaving the windows open year-round while running the heat/AC to get air turnover. Maybe because those HVAC systems are dated?
One issue is that we seem to have an all-or-nothing view of infection. People think that either a virus gets in your nose and you get sick, or it doesn't and you're fine. This extends to thinking that either there is a risk or there isn't, which motivates incorrect anti-mask arguments.
In reality, the probability of infection varies continuously with the degree of exposure, and the minimal infective dose might be prevented even if not all viral particles can be blocked.
With airborne transmission, it is practically impossible to reduce the transmission probability to zero in many situations, and we have overlooked the value of finite improvements. However, the circumstantial evidence suggests that, since super-spreader events are correlated with apparently high airborne concentrations of viral particles, that reducing the duration and intensity of exposure may yield significant benefits even if inhaled air cannot be made completely free of virions.
More emphasis on better masks that actually might prevent aerosol transmission and less emphasis on 6 foot distancing because such things matter little under aerosol conditions where air flow patterns dominate transmission. Also much more emphasis on outdoor vs indoor activities. So no it is not really the same guidance.
Indeed. Governments have been slow to draw these lessons unfortunately. My local government (quebec) lets you remove masks at indoors events when seated.
The article makes an excellent argument for the plausibility of indoor airflows being a major transmission vector. But I didn't see anything about ongoing research to quantify the transmission risks posed by aerosols vs. other transmission mechanisms. (Maybe I missed it?)
It's hard to make policy recommendations regarding aerosols if (a) we're not really sure how big a risk factor they pose and (b) the mitigations would be very expensive.
If anyone is in an indoor environment and wants to gauge risk, a portable co2 meter can be had for about $100-$150. Cod2 is a good proxy for indoor pollutants/air exchange, and I’m assuming it is a good proxy for aerosols too.
I use one of these, you can use a portable battery to power it.
One key result of this evidence is that we should take all the money going into deep cleaning, and spend it on higher quality masks for everyone. Also perhaps makeshift ventilation systems (being careful not to replicate that Hong Kong restaurant) or outdoor tents where feasible.
There is a weird disconnect. Everyone seems to acknowledge the most likely way to transmit COVID is via droplets when indoor. Yet, there is little discussion about ventilation. Maybe people felt like there was less they could do?
We probably aren't hearing about it because it's something we have less ability to protect against.
I remember a popular comment here a while back mentioning that epidemeologists' job is partly public relations, trying to figure out what they can tell the general public that will minimize the viral spread.
Making sure everyone wears masks will, at the scale of the general population, reduce the infection rate by some noticable percent. It's also something everyone can do, and it gives everyone a sense of control over the situation - enough of a sense, at least, to prevent chaos.
Talking about airborne transmission, though? The kind of masks that can protect against that are hard to come by. Not to mention that the virus could enter via the fluid of the eyes (not trying to add conspiracy here, just trying to make a point about the difficult reality of preventing infection [0]). Bio-rated goggles and N95+ rated masks are more than we can expect from a public that's making face masks out of bandannas.
I think we're seeing very pragmatic statements being made, that are tailored to a public that can't enter full biohazard mode and need to not panic.
One problem is that no one seems to know that AC systems recirculate air. I literally can't get people to believe me when I tell them this. When buying a window unit recently, some models had the ability to incorporate fresh outside air but the cheaper ones didn't. My home is leaky enough that I worry more about keeping outside air out rather than in, though.
There's one key paragraph buried in the article that will help a lot of people:
> However, to date, there is also no evidence of truly long-range transmission of COVID-19, or any pattern of spread like that of measles. Screaming “it’s airborne!” can give the wrong impression to an already weary and panicked public, and that’s one reason that some public-health specialists have been understandably wary of the term, sometimes even if they agreed aerosol transmission was possible. Cowling told me that it’s better to call these “short-range aerosols,” as that communicates the nature of the threat more accurately: Most of these particles are concentrated around the infected person, but, under the right circumstances, they can accumulate and get around.
Translation: people can get infected further away than with larger droplets -- especially in stuffy, enclosed environments -- but distance still reduces the risks.
A couple other articles I've read in the last few days also cover this topic:
Yes, the Coronavirus Is in the Air
> Transmission through aerosols matters — and probably a lot more than we’ve been able to prove yet.
...
> I am a civil and environmental engineer who studies how viruses and bacteria spread through the air — as well as one of the 239 scientists who signed an open letter in late June pressing the W.H.O. to consider the risk of airborne transmission more seriously.
> He believes ventilation may also be to blame for a case involving a young man from China’s Hunan province, who sat in the back of a bus but ended up infecting seven others in various areas of the vehicle and then two more on a second minibus he hopped onto next. Li interviewed the patient, driver, passengers and reviewed video footage and found it odd that few of those who became infected were nearby. In fact, at least one passenger who fell ill was as far away as possible at the front of the bus — 31 feet away — from the coronavirus-positive man. […] In the case of the Hunan man who transmitted the virus while riding two buses, Li said that “amazingly” after that four-hour window of infectivity, he is not known to have infected anyone else at all.
I would like to make a small point about the letter signed by "hundreds of scientists around the world".
According to the NY Times there were in fact 239 signatories, which coincidentally is almost the same number as the "253 ... scientists from 44 nations" warning of the dangers of electromagnetic radiation (!) that can be found at https://emfscientist.org/ . If you trust one, do you trust the other also?
Regardless of the merits of the rest of the article, I would caution against trusting a claim just because two hundred odd scientists from all sorts of disciplines were willing to sign an open letter. Science is not a democracy.
The amount of unknown and disagreement after all this time and money spent is a big failure of science. Laymen have a unique peak into how science works day to day, which might be good or bad depending on how you see it.
Yes it's a well written article by a clearly intelligent author who did his homework and knows his sources and of course we should never have ruled out short range aerosols. It's ridiculous. I think it only happened because so many people just believe whatever authorities like the CDC and WHO tell them without any critical reasoning applied. If these health agencies had not effectively ruled out the possibility afaik without any supporting evidence maybe there would have been more research to figure out droplet sizes and travel paths under various airflow conditions. Currently everyone seems to just want to make assumptions and stick to them, but that isn't science even if you call yourself a scientist.
Maybe also N95 masks would have been considered essential not only just to health care workers and maybe more effort might have been made to supply some to the general population. Currently 3M for instance voluntarily stopped selling their masks except to hospitals and speaking of those masks there is also not enough research on effective ways of decontaminating those masks without reducing their filtration effectiveness so that they can be reused more often and so that more can be made available to the public instead of effectively making them hospital only.
i wish target and home depot would stop making us wait in line while they futz about wiping things down. it's been clear that time spent in line with other people is a bigger concern than the possibility that something is lingering on the barcode scanner and will be transferred onto my box of nails, or bananas.
[+] [-] jennyyang|5 years ago|reply
The problem is that "airborne droplets" and "airborne" sound too similar and it's very hard for regular people to understand what that means. "Airborne droplets" means that viruses need saliva to transmit between people. "Airborne" means that the virus only needs dust particles to transmit to other people. Measles is airborne transmission, which means that if someone with measles enters a room, that room can be infectious for 12+ hours because viruses will be infectious in the dust. If someone with coronavirus sneezes in a room, the large heavy droplets will quickly fall to the ground. If you breathe in the droplets then you can catch the virus, but these only stay in the air for seconds. However, there are microdroplets which stay in the air for 30+ minutes depending on the air currents.
So there is a distinction between them. If coronavirus were truly airborne, then we would all need to wear masks all the time, even when no one is around. No where would be safe and we would have to implement extremely strict lockdowns.
But the fact that scientists and doctors have chosen to use the term "airborne" in both have made it extremely confusing and given how quickly information and misinformation is disseminated these days, they need to choose terms with care from now on.
[+] [-] SkyPuncher|5 years ago|reply
This is the slightly incorrect part with COVID.
Traditionally, this would be an appropriate description for other droplet transmission (like the flu). However, it seems COVID has an above average ability to survive in extremely fine droplets - think mist-sized particles that CAN float in the air for an extended period of time (given the right circumstances).
This nuance is challenging to convey. For healthcare workers, it's important because it likely means standard droplet based precautions are not enough. However, it also seems that full airborne precautions (PAPR's) are overkill. My take is N95's do enough to dehumidify droplets and ultimately break down particles.
For the general public, the nuance is less important. Most don't have access to proper fitting N95 (or better) masks, so they're stuck wearing cloth or surgical masks. They should simply think of COVID as airborne because they're likely not wearing the proper gear.
[+] [-] jtbayly|5 years ago|reply
if we assume that the goal is not to flatten the curve but to completely stop the virus in its tracks. Most people and countries don't have this goal.
Edit: To those downvoting, I'll just say that my statement is factual, so argue the facts. Long-term, we want a vaccine, yes. In the meantime, most people and countries are simply not willing to do what it takes to completely eliminate this virus. They think it would be nice if the virus went away, but they are not working towards that as their goal.
[+] [-] echelon|5 years ago|reply
The CDC told people that masks were not important at the start of the pandemic, largely as a means of reserving stock for doctors and first responders. They then performed an uneven and awkwardly stilted 180 on that message. This massively backfired and led to wide scale public distrust of the public health apparatus. The birth of the anti-mask movement, etc.
We'll be living with the ramifications for a long time.
You shouldn't lie to the public.
[+] [-] gdubs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raziel2p|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdlyga|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woeirua|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swsieber|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/far-uvc-light-safely-kil...
[2] Even on overcast days, as people who forgot sunscreen on cloudy days can attest too.
[+] [-] enraged_camel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csours|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PopeDotNinja|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandear|5 years ago|reply
Cloth masks wouldn’t protect against that. Masks don’t do anything to stop airborne spread, only potentially mitigating droplet spread.
Unless you are referring to biohazard respirators as “masks.”
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|5 years ago|reply
It doesn't look like you, or the people replying to you read the article. And thats a shame, because you're exactly the type of person who the author is trying to educate.
[+] [-] R0b0t1|5 years ago|reply
I work at a biotech company that studies virus transmission and helps others study it. It was clear from the very beginning that transmission was airborne. Why would it not be? That the WHO and some doctors were assuming it was not seriously damages their credibility as healthcare professionals.
Current events should lead people to seriously question deference given to doctors. They need to be held accountable for their actions and must be made to listen to professionals in other fields.
[+] [-] ColanR|5 years ago|reply
I completely agree with your first point; but what we need to seriously question is the cherry-picking of sources that were paraded in front of us by the media.
[+] [-] SkyPuncher|5 years ago|reply
To me the only thing that was clear was the definition of airborne is not standard.
By strict definition, COVID is not airborne since it seems to require a host material (e.g. water droplet). This is in contrast to measles which individual virus particles can survive without a host material. Practically speaking though, COVID seems to be able to survive well in such small droplets that it acts like an airborne disease.
At a public health, COVID might as well be treated as airborne. Within acute care settings, this is a critical difference is being used as justification that a _properly_ fitted N95 and eye covering is sufficient to care for COVID patients. If COVID was truly airborne, all patient care should require airborne-level PPE (like PAPRs).
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|5 years ago|reply
Doctors are, and should be, some of the most elite minds and highly respected scientists/caregivers. Like any group, they have inter-group controversy and debate, but let's not use that to pile onto the anti-science, anti-vax, anti-medical chorus which is gaining steam on the internet. Some doctors get things wrong: most doctors, however, enact evidence-based practices which have been vetted by statisticians, chemists, and physicists who help innovate and inform medical decision-making.
As high-minded as our concerns about doctors being incorrect might be, let's keep a wide view here and not tear down a vast-majority noble and expert profession. Let's have a nuanced discussion where we admit doctors are both experts, highly select, but also people with flaws too.
[+] [-] aantix|5 years ago|reply
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/07/01/research-d...
The chants "no justice, no peace"? "I can't breath"?
Those were clear chants. Everyone breathing on each other while chanting. Unencumbered by a mask.
[+] [-] credit_guy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|5 years ago|reply
The filter technology is essentially the same as in the N95, orders of magnitude more effective than cloth masks.
Put these indoors, multiple per classroom/working space to help the air refresh in sub 5 minute intervals.
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|5 years ago|reply
Air quality associated with:
Alzheimers: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-alzheimer...
Cancers, plural: https://www.aacr.org/patients-caregivers/progress-against-ca...
Sperm Quality: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4443398/#sec995...
Female Fertility: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2207560-exposure-to-air...
Autism: https://www.sciencealert.com/particulate-matter-in-air-pollu...
Bipolar/Depression: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/air-p...
side note: please make the ICE>Electric transition happen faster... sigh
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
Filters should be mandatory in any enclosed room, the fact that they don't even talk about them as part of the discussion about schools and businesses opening is mind boggling to me.
[+] [-] MiguelVieira|5 years ago|reply
https://globalepidemics.org/key-metrics-for-covid-suppressio...
the first thing I see is hot spots all across the southeast and desert southwest. These places have widely varying governments and cultures, but the one thing they do have in common right now is: they're hot.
My suspicion is that many of the outbreaks we've seen recently are caused by people from different households congregating indoors in buildings with air conditioning and closed windows. The article mentions this, but I rarely here it talked about on the news:
"The importance of aerosols may even help explain why the disease is now exploding in the southern United States, where people often go into air-conditioned spaces to avoid the sweltering heat."
[+] [-] milesvp|5 years ago|reply
It’s getting harder and harder to stay away from people from a purely psychological standpoint, and I think fall is going to get bad in the PNW as people congregate indoors to stay out of the wet and cold.
[+] [-] sp332|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vysero|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j_walter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliekelly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfdietz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scythe|5 years ago|reply
In reality, the probability of infection varies continuously with the degree of exposure, and the minimal infective dose might be prevented even if not all viral particles can be blocked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_infective_dose
With airborne transmission, it is practically impossible to reduce the transmission probability to zero in many situations, and we have overlooked the value of finite improvements. However, the circumstantial evidence suggests that, since super-spreader events are correlated with apparently high airborne concentrations of viral particles, that reducing the duration and intensity of exposure may yield significant benefits even if inhaled air cannot be made completely free of virions.
[+] [-] CogentHedgehog|5 years ago|reply
* Social distancing isn't enough to guarantee safety in indoors spaces: bad news for bars, clubs, gyms, concerts, and restaurants
* Outdoors spaces are probably safer than we previously thought
* Indoor mask-wearing becomes CRITICAL in public spaces
* Indoor ventilation becomes extra important, using fresh air from outside or filtered/UV-sanitized air
* Indoor air purifiers with HEPA ratings or UV sterilizer features may become valuable
But the same overall guidance still applies: avoid crowds, wear a mask, keep your distance, outdoors activities are safer than indoors activities
[+] [-] misanthropian00|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|5 years ago|reply
Mask wearing provides minimal benefits against droplet transmission, but they do nothing at all for small droplet aerosol transmission.
[+] [-] DoofusOfDeath|5 years ago|reply
It's hard to make policy recommendations regarding aerosols if (a) we're not really sure how big a risk factor they pose and (b) the mitigations would be very expensive.
[+] [-] graeme|5 years ago|reply
I use one of these, you can use a portable battery to power it.
https://www.amazon.com/AutoPilot-APCEMDL-Desktop-Data-Storag...
[+] [-] unclesaamm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ColanR|5 years ago|reply
I remember a popular comment here a while back mentioning that epidemeologists' job is partly public relations, trying to figure out what they can tell the general public that will minimize the viral spread.
Making sure everyone wears masks will, at the scale of the general population, reduce the infection rate by some noticable percent. It's also something everyone can do, and it gives everyone a sense of control over the situation - enough of a sense, at least, to prevent chaos.
Talking about airborne transmission, though? The kind of masks that can protect against that are hard to come by. Not to mention that the virus could enter via the fluid of the eyes (not trying to add conspiracy here, just trying to make a point about the difficult reality of preventing infection [0]). Bio-rated goggles and N95+ rated masks are more than we can expect from a public that's making face masks out of bandannas.
I think we're seeing very pragmatic statements being made, that are tailored to a public that can't enter full biohazard mode and need to not panic.
[0] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.09.085613v2
[+] [-] tgb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CogentHedgehog|5 years ago|reply
> However, to date, there is also no evidence of truly long-range transmission of COVID-19, or any pattern of spread like that of measles. Screaming “it’s airborne!” can give the wrong impression to an already weary and panicked public, and that’s one reason that some public-health specialists have been understandably wary of the term, sometimes even if they agreed aerosol transmission was possible. Cowling told me that it’s better to call these “short-range aerosols,” as that communicates the nature of the threat more accurately: Most of these particles are concentrated around the infected person, but, under the right circumstances, they can accumulate and get around.
Translation: people can get infected further away than with larger droplets -- especially in stuffy, enclosed environments -- but distance still reduces the risks.
[+] [-] js2|5 years ago|reply
Yes, the Coronavirus Is in the Air
> Transmission through aerosols matters — and probably a lot more than we’ve been able to prove yet.
...
> I am a civil and environmental engineer who studies how viruses and bacteria spread through the air — as well as one of the 239 scientists who signed an open letter in late June pressing the W.H.O. to consider the risk of airborne transmission more seriously.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/coronavirus-aeros...
Aboard the Diamond Princess, a Case Study in Aerosol Transmission
> A computer model of the cruise-ship outbreak found that the virus spread most readily in microscopic droplets light enough to linger in the air.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/health/diamond-princess-c...
And here's an article from two weeks ago that goes into some depth on superspreading events:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/18/coronavirus...
> He believes ventilation may also be to blame for a case involving a young man from China’s Hunan province, who sat in the back of a bus but ended up infecting seven others in various areas of the vehicle and then two more on a second minibus he hopped onto next. Li interviewed the patient, driver, passengers and reviewed video footage and found it odd that few of those who became infected were nearby. In fact, at least one passenger who fell ill was as far away as possible at the front of the bus — 31 feet away — from the coronavirus-positive man. […] In the case of the Hunan man who transmitted the virus while riding two buses, Li said that “amazingly” after that four-hour window of infectivity, he is not known to have infected anyone else at all.
[+] [-] prof-dr-ir|5 years ago|reply
According to the NY Times there were in fact 239 signatories, which coincidentally is almost the same number as the "253 ... scientists from 44 nations" warning of the dangers of electromagnetic radiation (!) that can be found at https://emfscientist.org/ . If you trust one, do you trust the other also?
Regardless of the merits of the rest of the article, I would caution against trusting a claim just because two hundred odd scientists from all sorts of disciplines were willing to sign an open letter. Science is not a democracy.
[+] [-] lurkmurk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misanthropian00|5 years ago|reply
Maybe also N95 masks would have been considered essential not only just to health care workers and maybe more effort might have been made to supply some to the general population. Currently 3M for instance voluntarily stopped selling their masks except to hospitals and speaking of those masks there is also not enough research on effective ways of decontaminating those masks without reducing their filtration effectiveness so that they can be reused more often and so that more can be made available to the public instead of effectively making them hospital only.
[+] [-] sigstoat|5 years ago|reply