{"id":166236,"date":"2020-08-10T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=166236"},"modified":"2020-12-02T10:02:08","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T10:02:08","slug":"the-coronavirus-is-airborne-keep-saying-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/08\/the-coronavirus-is-airborne-keep-saying-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coronavirus Is Airborne. Keep Saying It."},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a jarring message, and the right one.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Illustration by Slate.
Photo by Andrey Zhuravlev\/iStock\/Getty Images Plus.<\/p><\/div>\n

31 Jul 2020 – <\/em>In the U.S., COVID-19 is spreading<\/a> like wildfire. At the same time, the research community is learning<\/a> more and more about how the coronavirus gets from one person to another. There are many nuances, and we don\u2019t know everything about it yet. But we\u2019re in an emergency, and we do have actionable facts<\/a>. To help break through the noise, the public should be warned, plainly, and often: The coronavirus is airborne<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Researchers and medical practitioners have spent months<\/a> pressing the public health establishment to evolve on messaging<\/a> about the ways that COVID-19 spreads. At first, many experts thought that the virus spread mainly via large droplets, like those that fly out of your mouth and fall to the ground within a few feet, particularly when you cough. Then it became clear that people without coughs or other symptoms could\u2014and, in many, many cases, do\u2014spread<\/a> the virus too. In an April 1 letter to the White House, the National Academy of Sciences raised concerns<\/a> about the risk of the spread of the coronavirus through small droplets, which can accumulate around us as we talk and even as we breathe normally. Two days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended people could wear \u201cface coverings\u201d over their mouths and noses if they wanted<\/a>. In early July, 239 scientists called on<\/a> the World Health Organization to finally recognize the risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19. WHO now acknowledges<\/a> that coronavirus-carrying droplets may remain suspended in the air in crowded indoor spaces, but its messaging<\/a> tends to convey the risk of airborne spread of COVID-19 as an afterthought. For example, a WHO Q&A page<\/a> gives the impression that if we\u2019re all staying about 3 feet away from one another, the distance they recommend, and taking care to wash our hands, everything will be OK.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be. The updated message that needs to reach people is: In addition to visible routes of transmission like getting coughed on or touching a surface and then your face, COVID-19 can spread through the air we breathe, particularly indoors. Or more succinctly: The coronavirus is airborne. Repeat it. Tell your friends and family. We should be hearing it on the radio and podcasts, seeing it in PSAs on TV and YouTube. It should be written on little signs that we must pass as we carefully make our way into grocery stores. While we don\u2019t need to worry about infectious clouds of coronavirus roaming an open beach\u2014the outside is pretty safe, if you can stay distanced\u2014we do need to be really worried about encountering the virus anywhere there are people in poorly ventilated spaces, because the coronavirus is, indeed, airborne. The message needs to break through the noise of a world that produces<\/a> about 350,000 tweets every minute, in which a person\u2019s knowledge of the pandemic differs depending on their preferred<\/a> news source, and where a full third of Americans are not consistently wearing<\/a> face coverings into stores and other businesses.<\/p>\n

A big part of the challenges around messaging might be that the word airborne<\/em> implies different things to specialists in different disciplines. In aerosol science, airborne<\/em><\/a> can describe particles that drift on air currents. In medicine, airborne<\/em> evokes a set of specific disease control measures appropriate<\/a> for patients with tuberculosis or chickenpox, such as isolating patients in special rooms with negative air pressure<\/a>. As a scientist, I can relate to the specialized nature of this term, but as part of the general public who wishes to avoid COVID-19, it doesn\u2019t much matter to me if one virus that can be infectious in the air<\/a> for about 30 minutes (which is the estimate\u00a0for SARS-CoV-2<\/a>),\u00a0and another virus that can be infectious in the air for two hours (the case for the measles<\/a> virus<\/a>), are both described<\/a> as airborne. That\u2019s a matter of degree. What matters to me is that if I\u2019m in the same room as a person infected with COVID-19 and they are consistently<\/a> singing, yelling, talking, or even simply breathing, there are SARS-CoV-2 viral particles carried by small droplets drifting through the air that could potentially infect me. That seems to be true even if I\u2019m over 6 feet away if I\u2019m stuck in a room for a while that is not ventilated\u2014say, a dive bar. I am more likely to be concerned about all this if I have it ringing in my head that the coronavirus is airborne.<\/p>\n