This was one of the things that came up in the meta-discussion last week. HN loves to make "well ackchuyally" posts that are technically correct but meaningles

This was one of the things that came up in the meta-discussion last week. HN loves to make "well ackchuyally" posts that are technically correct but meaningless to the layman. It's a result of the "points scoring" format of the site, same as Reddit. It leads to people having to make cumbersome posts that fully specify every single point that might possibly be the subject of any disagreement, and that's antithetical to good, informative, concise content. Pedanticism is not the same thing as content. In fact, it usually crosses the rules of the site into "not giving the most gracious possible reading of a comment". And yes, you have to strike some balance between being pedantic and being accurate. To the layman, if you don't already understand the difference between aerosol and airbone transmission, there really isn't one in practice. Being around an infected person can cause you to become infected yourself, without direct physical c. That is the short and long of it. It doesn't shed off their skin, just when they breathe, or talk, or sneeze, or cough, and potentially can linger for hours. There is no meaningful difference in how you would behave if this was airborne vs aerosol. Everyone thinks their particular "well ackchuyally" is important, but usually... they're not.