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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

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.

jennyyang 6y ago
I disagree. You need to treat the virus at the right level of concern otherwise you lose credibility. As we can all see, credibility from the experts needs to be maintained, otherwise no one trusts them anyone. The whole fiasco with masks is because the experts told us things that were obviously wrong at the beginning (ie. masks don't work, masks won't help regular people, etc). If there is airborne droplet transmission, which I believe is the case otherwise we wouldn't get such infectious spread in bars, etc, then we need to implement better ventilation, social distancing and mask wearing and probably goggles too. If it was truly "airborne", which it isn't, then the measures would need to be much, much more draconian otherwise it would spread much quicker.
- raziel2p 6y ago
  > You need to treat the virus at the right level of concern otherwise you lose credibility. I agree with this but don't see how the use of the word "airborne" conveys concern. Maybe this is some american hollywood trope now that I remember reading the phrase "It's airborne!" in the original article? Wikipedia's article on airborne diseases certainly don't seem to imply that there's a strict definition of how long a pathogen has to survive in the air for it to be classified as airborne. > As we can all see, credibility from the experts needs to be maintained, otherwise no one trusts them anyone. While I agree with this, we're in an age of misinformation and macho power culture where saying "we're not sure yet so let's just be as careful as possible" apparently doesn't do much good in many places of the world. And I don't think a technically incorrect use of a word like airborne is NEARLY as significant as changing stances on masks and presidents endorsing quacks.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > If it was truly "airborne", which it isn't, then the measures would need to be much, much more draconian otherwise it would spread much quicker. You need to make up your mind here, are you talking to professionals, or lay people? To lay people the term airborne means it spreads by air... which is what it does. The fact that it doesn't linger in the air for 12 hours is secondary and would need to be addressed in whatever policy is put in place. Since we don't need lay-people to understand what the virus isn't, the term airborne is just fine.
fragmede 6y ago
It's possible, if annoying, to simply wait 5 minutes between trips while the elevator car's air clears. It has to be handled differently (eg using a fan) if it would take 12 hours for the air to clear. Given that we are all talking about COVID-19, as caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus, (and not any other disease), the exact word or phrase used in popular media is less important, what's important is for people to recognize that breathing someone's are 5 minutes later is hazardous. Would you even know if there was person in the same elevator car as you 5 minutes before you came along? How can you recognize if they were actively symptomatic and positive and not wearing a mask. What it's called by scientists is less important compared to outright science denial going on. Even before "global warming" was renamed "global climate change", people are able to learn and understand the phenomena that it refers to, even if there are idiots that say "global warming isn't real" because they felt cold at some point. With today's instant access to information, I want to push back against the idea that everybody who cares to ask is too dumb to learn the difference between "airborne" (12 hours) vs "airborne droplets" (5 minutes).

jennyyang 6y ago

I disagree. You need to treat the virus at the right level of concern otherwise you lose credibility. As we can all see, credibility from the experts needs to be maintained, otherwise no one trusts them anyone. The whole fiasco with masks is because the experts told us things that were obviously wrong at the beginning (ie. masks don't work, masks won't help regular people, etc). If there is airborne droplet transmission, which I believe is the case otherwise we wouldn't get such infectious spread in bars, etc, then we need to implement better ventilation, social distancing and mask wearing and probably goggles too. If it was truly "airborne", which it isn't, then the measures would need to be much, much more draconian otherwise it would spread much quicker.

raziel2p 6y ago
> You need to treat the virus at the right level of concern otherwise you lose credibility. I agree with this but don't see how the use of the word "airborne" conveys concern. Maybe this is some american hollywood trope now that I remember reading the phrase "It's airborne!" in the original article? Wikipedia's article on airborne diseases certainly don't seem to imply that there's a strict definition of how long a pathogen has to survive in the air for it to be classified as airborne. > As we can all see, credibility from the experts needs to be maintained, otherwise no one trusts them anyone. While I agree with this, we're in an age of misinformation and macho power culture where saying "we're not sure yet so let's just be as careful as possible" apparently doesn't do much good in many places of the world. And I don't think a technically incorrect use of a word like airborne is NEARLY as significant as changing stances on masks and presidents endorsing quacks.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> If it was truly "airborne", which it isn't, then the measures would need to be much, much more draconian otherwise it would spread much quicker. You need to make up your mind here, are you talking to professionals, or lay people? To lay people the term airborne means it spreads by air... which is what it does. The fact that it doesn't linger in the air for 12 hours is secondary and would need to be addressed in whatever policy is put in place. Since we don't need lay-people to understand what the virus isn't, the term airborne is just fine.

fragmede 6y ago

It's possible, if annoying, to simply wait 5 minutes between trips while the elevator car's air clears. It has to be handled differently (eg using a fan) if it would take 12 hours for the air to clear. Given that we are all talking about COVID-19, as caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus, (and not any other disease), the exact word or phrase used in popular media is less important, what's important is for people to recognize that breathing someone's are 5 minutes later is hazardous. Would you even know if there was person in the same elevator car as you 5 minutes before you came along? How can you recognize if they were actively symptomatic and positive and not wearing a mask. What it's called by scientists is less important compared to outright science denial going on. Even before "global warming" was renamed "global climate change", people are able to learn and understand the phenomena that it refers to, even if there are idiots that say "global warming isn't real" because they felt cold at some point. With today's instant access to information, I want to push back against the idea that everybody who cares to ask is too dumb to learn the difference between "airborne" (12 hours) vs "airborne droplets" (5 minutes).