> One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing di

> One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed viral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled. I am a doctor by no stretch of the imagination, but I was a voice major in college and sang in choirs for 4 years. When you sing, you breathe in deeply, from the diaphragm, and hold the air low in your lungs. Properly, your abdomen will expand more than your chest. Moreover, you hold the air in. Singing is not like breathing out at the doctor's office. You take a deep breath and then let that air out in a controlled manner over the course of a musical phrase. That kind of breathing is exactly—and instinctively—what you would not want to do if you were in some kind of miasma of pathogens. Imagine walking through a sick ward at a hospital, or even a cave full of bats. You would be trying not to breath, taking only shallow breaths. Again, I very well may not know what I'm talking about, with respect to disease transmission, but I think the forceful and deliberate inhalations are more significant than the exhalations.