...what's the difference between a < 5 um aerosol vs a slightly larger airborne droplet? Not having good terminology muddies the water and makes it hard to communicate effectively with each other and with the public.
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Here's a pre-COVID paper that's quite prescient about the problems with the confusing terminology (and note that even there, the size they use is different than what WHO uses), and distinguish short and long-range aerosols.https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-019-3707-y …
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I know that at least one of the authors has been using short-range aerosol as key transmission mode for COVID, especially for super-spreader events, and terminologically, seems easier to communicate, distinguishing "hospital vents will spread everywhere" and "1m and you're good."
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Agreed- which is why when people were using "airborne" to describe this, the ID folks raised the flag saying "hey...maybe let's not use that term because the public health and healthcare associations with it”.
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Both an arrow and a balloon are airborne. Most epidemiology supports arrows and not balloons except rare exceptions. It has been pointed out, the restaurant/air-con example is more like an arrow. Not seeing many balloon examples
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Totally agree with this. "Short-range airborne" or "Short-range aerosol" might be better terms for superspreading events, i.e. over room scale, with simultaneous presence of infected and susceptible. No evidence I know of for long-range.
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So, basically, just so our poor overwhelmed brains get it, viruses are lego construction robots made of molecular pieces, & they deteriorate faster in some situations than in others. We know what many of those situations are. Enough to bring epidemic curves down and quench fires.
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It's not measles, but it's almost identical in size, with similar morphology and is hearty (unless this link is wrong) https://viralzone.expasy.org/5216 Seems logical that it would float in the air for as long as measles, doesn't it?
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No. We have six months of epidemiological data that says no. No need for speculation at this point.
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