11 ms·

They have discussed this ad nauseum. It's not airborne. It's designated as "airborne droplet". I read an article from a epidemilogist that wrote about a very r

They have discussed this ad nauseum. It's not airborne. It's designated as "airborne droplet". I read an article from a epidemilogist that wrote about a very recent study of an isolation chamber for a covid-19 patient. They detected the virus everywhere on surfaces in the isolation chamber. This is consistent with airborne droplet spreading, since the patient was presumably coughing and droplets were being spread throughout the isolation chamber. What they DIE NOT find was the virus in the air. If it's truly airborne like measles, it would be detected in the air itself, but that was not true. Thus, it is not airborne. I don't have the source for this, because I probably read 200 articles a day like everyone else so it's lost in my history. But I actively committed this to memory and reassured me that this was not airborne, but rather airborne droplet.

Reason077 7y ago
The thing is, though, Covid-19 doesn't cause coughing in asymptomatic cases. I had no cough before developing fever and muscle pains, and only a very mild cough afterwards. Are you suggesting that asymptomatic cases are not infectious? Likewise, according to the article, "nobody there was coughing or sneezing".
- kharms 7y ago
  You ever breathe out on a cold winter day? Your breath is humid.
  - Reason077 7y ago
    Exactly! But I wouldn't describe this humidity as "droplets", like you would produce from coughing or sneezing.
    - untog 7y ago
      I might not describe it that way either, but do medical professionals describe it that way?
    - James_Henry 7y ago
      It's not just large droplets that seem to carry the virus but also aerosolized droplets that travel farther when you cough or sneeze and that are emitted from talking and singing.
      - Reason077 7y ago
        Yes, exactly my point.
- nokcha 7y ago
  Talking and singing produce respiratory droplets and aerosols. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jnq2A7A7ytgttQ5Ek/covid-transmission-by-talking-and-singing https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jnq2A7A7ytgttQ5Ek/covid-tran... and the references cited therein.
gameswithgo 7y ago
This is an important distinction for experts who know the terms of art, but for regular people it is maybe misleading to keep insisting that "it isn't airborne". It is traveling through the air, you can get it, through the air, if you are near another person. I have seen this misunderstanding in real life. People who think an outdoor festival is safe because "it isn't airborne" As well, at least one expert, in South Korea, states that it is possible to become aerosolized and actually airborne in the right conditions (many people, singing, shouting, in a small area). Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=1559s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=1559s
- remarkEon 7y ago
  When you tell people who have zero experience or understanding with/of this sort of thing, you end up accidentally convincing them they can only get it through direct contact with an infected person. Without the additional context it also conflicts with the explicit guidance for staying at least 1m away from people.
  - irq11 7y ago
    The “explicit guidance” is also minimally scientific: it varies from 1m in (parts of) Europe, to six feet in the US. These things are being made up on the fly. There is no solid science for how far apart people should be, and there are so many complicating factors (what kind of room? how much airflow?) that any such guidance is a rough guideline, at best. Folks who are stringently trying to stay six feet apart from each other while walking down the street in Manhattan, for example, are more than a bit silly. The GP is a reasonable statement of the current scientific knowledge: it isn’t airborne, and you actually do need fairly intimate contact to get the virus “through the air”. Spending hours together in an unventilated room is probably sufficient, even if you never get closer than 1m; conversely, it probably doesn’t matter much if you pass right next to someone on the street(unless they cough directly in your face).
- jpster 7y ago
  FWIW, the YT video you recommend has a lot of interesting info from the person who’s reportedly Korea’s foremost expert. Among other things, he mentions cases of reinfections. The reinfection debate has been murky. Is it just a testing artifact, etc? Notably, he did not mention any of these alternate explanations. He stated rather plainly that they have seen cases of reinfection.
codekilla 7y ago
I think this is very wrong. Looking back I think this distinction is what people will point to as the big mistake people made. This idea of large droplets in itself is basically meaningless. I encourage everyone to read [O] very carefully. This thing will shed into the air, and it will infect others. Countries that encourage everyone to wear masks will succeed in containing this. There is way too much bs being discussed around large droplets. The paper I link to is looking at influenza A in particular, but I am making the very strong assertion that SARS-CoV-2 will show significant homology with regard to transmission behavior. I think the rates of infection alone bear this out if people think clearly about this. [O] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843947/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843947/
- James_Henry 7y ago
  Yes, this article points out that aerosols are much smaller than droplets and that health officials see this event as evidence of the aerosolization of the coronavirus. The aerosolized virus may even stay in the air for 30 minutes. It seems we all should be wearing masks in public!
- libertine 7y ago
  >Countries that encourage everyone to wear masks will succeed in containing this. Isn't the main reason for the success of this measure precisely to make any infected people retain droplets (big or small) inside the mask? I'm not saying it doesn't offer any protection from droplets in the air, but the main motivation was containing droplets. In this case, Choir practice it's literally a spit fest - you're singing loudly in a tightly packed large group of people. It's like the perfect scenario for spread. Even if they are in rows, you get them on your head, neck, shoulders, hands, pants, sheets of paper you're holding, even shoes. Also, if it is indeed suspended in air, then wouldn't the minimum requirement be N95 masks?
  - aeroevan 7y ago
    >Isn't the main reason for the success of this measure precisely to make any infected people retain droplets (big or small) inside the mask? The one thing that people don't seem to think about is even if it's only effective at keeping droplets from infected people from spreading, how are all of the asymptomatic supposed to know they should wear a mask? The obvious solution is that everyone should wear a mask. I think people keep discouraging mask use due to the shortage, but if people are misinforming the public due to a shortage that's still not cool
zer00eyz 7y ago
The distinction you are making is one of radius of distribution. Someone infected with measles shedding the virus can send it far and wide... COVID-19 needs a carrier, a bit of water/mucus to survive in. The radius of distribution is smaller (6 feet) but these drops can linger in the air depending on ambient conditions. EVERYONE needs to put on a mask, not to avoid catching it, but to avoid spreading it... The fact that our national policy doesn't reflect this is negligent, and in the end it will have caused unneeded deaths. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/not-wearing-masks-protect-against-coronavirus-big-mistake-top-chinese-scientist-says https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/not-wearing-masks-pr... https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/would-everyone-wearing-face-masks-help-us-slow-pandemic https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/would-everyone-weari... https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927723 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927723 https://www.fda.gov/media/136449/download https://www.fda.gov/media/136449/download
- francisofascii 7y ago
  The real question is how long can it linger in the air? Seconds, minutes, hours? There seems to be a lot of social pressure to stay indoors, and that social distancing with a 6 foot radius isn't good enough.
  - zer00eyz 7y ago
    > The real question is how long can it linger in the air? There is an article out there that outlines this for other airborne diseases but I can't find it... Hot and dry is going to be the outright winner here...
    - benibela 7y ago
      Here is a case where it traveled 4.5m and lingered for 30 minutes: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074351/coronavirus-can-travel-twice-far-official-safe-distance-and-stay https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074351/coro...
      - 7y ago
James_Henry 7y ago
It's unfortunate that you don't have the source, because it would be nice to see how long after after the covid-19 patient left the chamber they tested the air for the virus. People need to understand that there is a good possibility that this virus can stay in the air, even if it is only for 5 or 10 minutes. If using the word airborne isn't correct use of scientific jargon, it at least is correct use of common English.
- DennisP 7y ago
  The article mentions another test that measured three hours in the air, though they say it's probably no more than half an hour in real-world conditions.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    That’s a lab test where they first aerosolize the virus and then spray it into the air and measure how long it lasts. It doesn’t necessarily reflect what actually happens when someone breathes or coughs.
    - James_Henry 7y ago
      Yes, the researchers thought that in normal instances that it could last 30 minutes in the air. Also, health officials are pointing to instances like this choir practice to show that aerosolization of the virus is an important thing to take into consideration.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    If it's the same test I saw, it was at least 3 hours in the air; they stopped sampling at that point, as they were mostly measuring different surface persistence.
  - hadlock 7y ago
    Half an hour is an eternity in an elevator though
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
asah 7y ago
oh I get it, the virus teleports from the patient to the surface, no air transmission. /s (you're splitting hairs, and the implied medical advice will actually kill people who follow it - much MUCH MUCH safer to simply say "airborne" to the general public, who need a simpler model than this)
dweekly 7y ago
I'm pretty sure this is the study you are referencing: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762692 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762692
beerandt 7y ago
The term for the sliding scale between airborne and contact only spread is aerosolized. It's still a not universally agreed to term or concept, but likely will be, especially after this ordeal.
moioci 7y ago
Not everyone agrees with this assessment. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973
simonh 7y ago
Medical professionals consider transmission through the air by small droplets like this to be 'Airborn Transmission'. See the page on the Johns Hopkins site[0], and the Wikipedia page on Airborn Diseases[1]. The difference between 'droplet' transmission such as flu and the 'airborn route' is just the size of the droplets. Infections flu droplets need to be so big they don't linger in the air very long. They tend to be projected ballistically and mainly end up on surfaces and spread by contact, while the smaller droplets such as the ones that seem to spread Covid-19 linger in the air and can be conducted via air flows such as ventilation systems. Measles, which you cite as truly airborn, is also spread by small droplets and would almost certainly be captured by the 0.3 micron filters described in the study you seem to be referring to [2] that were used to scrub the air samples, the same fineness as N95 masks recommended for protection agains Measles. [0] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_disease [2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762692 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762692
dragonwriter 7y ago
> They have discussed this ad nauseum. It's not airborne. It's designated as "airborne droplet". The case at issue here strongly suggests aerosol, not droplet, transmission; that's the whole point. Aerosol transmission is smaller particles that remain suspended longer than what is classes as droplet transmission, and droplet precautions aren't adequate for it. It's a bit fuzzy whether it is necessarily actually classed as airborne transmission but of defined precaution classes it requires airborne rather than droplet precautions. Yes, the COVID-19 is mostly being treated as only having droplet transmission (and therefor requiring droplet and not airborne precautions), which is potentially a major error if it can be transmitted on aerosols.

Reason077 7y ago

The thing is, though, Covid-19 doesn't cause coughing in asymptomatic cases. I had no cough before developing fever and muscle pains, and only a very mild cough afterwards. Are you suggesting that asymptomatic cases are not infectious? Likewise, according to the article, "nobody there was coughing or sneezing".

kharms 7y ago
You ever breathe out on a cold winter day? Your breath is humid.
- Reason077 7y ago
  Exactly! But I wouldn't describe this humidity as "droplets", like you would produce from coughing or sneezing.
  - untog 7y ago
    I might not describe it that way either, but do medical professionals describe it that way?
  - James_Henry 7y ago
    It's not just large droplets that seem to carry the virus but also aerosolized droplets that travel farther when you cough or sneeze and that are emitted from talking and singing.
    - Reason077 7y ago
      Yes, exactly my point.
nokcha 7y ago
Talking and singing produce respiratory droplets and aerosols. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jnq2A7A7ytgttQ5Ek/covid-transmission-by-talking-and-singing https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jnq2A7A7ytgttQ5Ek/covid-tran... and the references cited therein.

gameswithgo 7y ago

This is an important distinction for experts who know the terms of art, but for regular people it is maybe misleading to keep insisting that "it isn't airborne". It is traveling through the air, you can get it, through the air, if you are near another person. I have seen this misunderstanding in real life. People who think an outdoor festival is safe because "it isn't airborne" As well, at least one expert, in South Korea, states that it is possible to become aerosolized and actually airborne in the right conditions (many people, singing, shouting, in a small area). Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=1559s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=1559s

remarkEon 7y ago
When you tell people who have zero experience or understanding with/of this sort of thing, you end up accidentally convincing them they can only get it through direct contact with an infected person. Without the additional context it also conflicts with the explicit guidance for staying at least 1m away from people.
- irq11 7y ago
  The “explicit guidance” is also minimally scientific: it varies from 1m in (parts of) Europe, to six feet in the US. These things are being made up on the fly. There is no solid science for how far apart people should be, and there are so many complicating factors (what kind of room? how much airflow?) that any such guidance is a rough guideline, at best. Folks who are stringently trying to stay six feet apart from each other while walking down the street in Manhattan, for example, are more than a bit silly. The GP is a reasonable statement of the current scientific knowledge: it isn’t airborne, and you actually do need fairly intimate contact to get the virus “through the air”. Spending hours together in an unventilated room is probably sufficient, even if you never get closer than 1m; conversely, it probably doesn’t matter much if you pass right next to someone on the street(unless they cough directly in your face).
jpster 7y ago
FWIW, the YT video you recommend has a lot of interesting info from the person who’s reportedly Korea’s foremost expert. Among other things, he mentions cases of reinfections. The reinfection debate has been murky. Is it just a testing artifact, etc? Notably, he did not mention any of these alternate explanations. He stated rather plainly that they have seen cases of reinfection.

codekilla 7y ago

I think this is very wrong. Looking back I think this distinction is what people will point to as the big mistake people made. This idea of large droplets in itself is basically meaningless. I encourage everyone to read [O] very carefully. This thing will shed into the air, and it will infect others. Countries that encourage everyone to wear masks will succeed in containing this. There is way too much bs being discussed around large droplets. The paper I link to is looking at influenza A in particular, but I am making the very strong assertion that SARS-CoV-2 will show significant homology with regard to transmission behavior. I think the rates of infection alone bear this out if people think clearly about this. [O] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843947/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843947/

James_Henry 7y ago
Yes, this article points out that aerosols are much smaller than droplets and that health officials see this event as evidence of the aerosolization of the coronavirus. The aerosolized virus may even stay in the air for 30 minutes. It seems we all should be wearing masks in public!
libertine 7y ago
>Countries that encourage everyone to wear masks will succeed in containing this. Isn't the main reason for the success of this measure precisely to make any infected people retain droplets (big or small) inside the mask? I'm not saying it doesn't offer any protection from droplets in the air, but the main motivation was containing droplets. In this case, Choir practice it's literally a spit fest - you're singing loudly in a tightly packed large group of people. It's like the perfect scenario for spread. Even if they are in rows, you get them on your head, neck, shoulders, hands, pants, sheets of paper you're holding, even shoes. Also, if it is indeed suspended in air, then wouldn't the minimum requirement be N95 masks?
- aeroevan 7y ago
  >Isn't the main reason for the success of this measure precisely to make any infected people retain droplets (big or small) inside the mask? The one thing that people don't seem to think about is even if it's only effective at keeping droplets from infected people from spreading, how are all of the asymptomatic supposed to know they should wear a mask? The obvious solution is that everyone should wear a mask. I think people keep discouraging mask use due to the shortage, but if people are misinforming the public due to a shortage that's still not cool

zer00eyz 7y ago

The distinction you are making is one of radius of distribution. Someone infected with measles shedding the virus can send it far and wide... COVID-19 needs a carrier, a bit of water/mucus to survive in. The radius of distribution is smaller (6 feet) but these drops can linger in the air depending on ambient conditions. EVERYONE needs to put on a mask, not to avoid catching it, but to avoid spreading it... The fact that our national policy doesn't reflect this is negligent, and in the end it will have caused unneeded deaths. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/not-wearing-masks-protect-against-coronavirus-big-mistake-top-chinese-scientist-says https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/not-wearing-masks-pr... https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/would-everyone-wearing-face-masks-help-us-slow-pandemic https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/would-everyone-weari... https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927723 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927723 https://www.fda.gov/media/136449/download https://www.fda.gov/media/136449/download

francisofascii 7y ago
The real question is how long can it linger in the air? Seconds, minutes, hours? There seems to be a lot of social pressure to stay indoors, and that social distancing with a 6 foot radius isn't good enough.
- zer00eyz 7y ago
  > The real question is how long can it linger in the air? There is an article out there that outlines this for other airborne diseases but I can't find it... Hot and dry is going to be the outright winner here...
  - benibela 7y ago
    Here is a case where it traveled 4.5m and lingered for 30 minutes: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074351/coronavirus-can-travel-twice-far-official-safe-distance-and-stay https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074351/coro...
    - 7y ago

James_Henry 7y ago

It's unfortunate that you don't have the source, because it would be nice to see how long after after the covid-19 patient left the chamber they tested the air for the virus. People need to understand that there is a good possibility that this virus can stay in the air, even if it is only for 5 or 10 minutes. If using the word airborne isn't correct use of scientific jargon, it at least is correct use of common English.

DennisP 7y ago
The article mentions another test that measured three hours in the air, though they say it's probably no more than half an hour in real-world conditions.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  That’s a lab test where they first aerosolize the virus and then spray it into the air and measure how long it lasts. It doesn’t necessarily reflect what actually happens when someone breathes or coughs.
  - James_Henry 7y ago
    Yes, the researchers thought that in normal instances that it could last 30 minutes in the air. Also, health officials are pointing to instances like this choir practice to show that aerosolization of the virus is an important thing to take into consideration.
- beerandt 7y ago
  If it's the same test I saw, it was at least 3 hours in the air; they stopped sampling at that point, as they were mostly measuring different surface persistence.
- hadlock 7y ago
  Half an hour is an eternity in an elevator though

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

asah 7y ago

oh I get it, the virus teleports from the patient to the surface, no air transmission. /s (you're splitting hairs, and the implied medical advice will actually kill people who follow it - much MUCH MUCH safer to simply say "airborne" to the general public, who need a simpler model than this)

dweekly 7y ago

I'm pretty sure this is the study you are referencing: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762692 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762692

beerandt 7y ago

The term for the sliding scale between airborne and contact only spread is aerosolized. It's still a not universally agreed to term or concept, but likely will be, especially after this ordeal.

moioci 7y ago

Not everyone agrees with this assessment. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973

simonh 7y ago

Medical professionals consider transmission through the air by small droplets like this to be 'Airborn Transmission'. See the page on the Johns Hopkins site[0], and the Wikipedia page on Airborn Diseases[1]. The difference between 'droplet' transmission such as flu and the 'airborn route' is just the size of the droplets. Infections flu droplets need to be so big they don't linger in the air very long. They tend to be projected ballistically and mainly end up on surfaces and spread by contact, while the smaller droplets such as the ones that seem to spread Covid-19 linger in the air and can be conducted via air flows such as ventilation systems. Measles, which you cite as truly airborn, is also spread by small droplets and would almost certainly be captured by the 0.3 micron filters described in the study you seem to be referring to [2] that were used to scrub the air samples, the same fineness as N95 masks recommended for protection agains Measles. [0] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_disease [2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762692 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762692

dragonwriter 7y ago

> They have discussed this ad nauseum. It's not airborne. It's designated as "airborne droplet". The case at issue here strongly suggests aerosol, not droplet, transmission; that's the whole point. Aerosol transmission is smaller particles that remain suspended longer than what is classes as droplet transmission, and droplet precautions aren't adequate for it. It's a bit fuzzy whether it is necessarily actually classed as airborne transmission but of defined precaution classes it requires airborne rather than droplet precautions. Yes, the COVID-19 is mostly being treated as only having droplet transmission (and therefor requiring droplet and not airborne precautions), which is potentially a major error if it can be transmitted on aerosols.