I completely agree with your first point; but what we need to seriously question is the cherry-picking of sources that were paraded in front of us by the media.
To me the only thing that was clear was the definition of airborne is not standard.
By strict definition, COVID is not airborne since it seems to require a host material (e.g. water droplet). This is in contrast to measles which individual virus particles can survive without a host material. Practically speaking though, COVID seems to be able to survive well in such small droplets that it acts like an airborne disease.
At a public health, COVID might as well be treated as airborne. Within acute care settings, this is a critical difference is being used as justification that a _properly_ fitted N95 and eye covering is sufficient to care for COVID patients. If COVID was truly airborne, all patient care should require airborne-level PPE (like PAPRs).
HIV/AIDS is a bit more important because the disease can lag the infection by a large period.
You are wrong. Read:
1. https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/transmissi....
2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2342-5_reference.....
Aerosol transmission is the main vector.
Consider posing your statement in the reverse: SARS-CoV-2 does not disperse in droplets, and/or is not infectious when not in a droplet. There is no reason to believe either of those things!
It's totally reasonable to assume the virus could separate from a droplet and would remain infectious by itself for enough time to infect someone. This is common in other viruses, and seems to make sense from first principles. Why would virus particles not be able to form aerosols?
Are you really prepared to make the bet that they aren't infectious?
It's my understanding that most don't spread in this fashion. If you're hospitalized with cold/flu, your care team will observe droplet precautions, not aerosol ones.
If you have measles, which spreads via aerosol, they'll be using substantially more gear. The aerosol transmission is also why measles is shockingly easy to spread versus most other diseases.
>The physics of exhaled air and flow physics have generated hypotheses about possible mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 transmission through aerosols.(13-16) These theories suggest that 1) a number of respiratory droplets generate microscopic aerosols (<5 µm) by evaporating, and 2) normal breathing and talking results in exhaled aerosols. Thus, a susceptible person could inhale aerosols, and could become infected if the aerosols contain the virus in sufficient quantity to cause infection within the recipient. However, the proportion of exhaled droplet nuclei or of respiratory droplets that evaporate to generate aerosols, and the infectious dose of viable SARS-CoV-2 required to cause infection in another person are not known, but it has been studied for other respiratory viruses.(17)
What the WHO and some doctors are doing is going: "despite the fact that it seems like it can spread via aerosols and that seems fairly likely, we want hard proof and are willing to risk our lives on that basis."
So, lol.
From my understanding, part of this is because most hospitals don't have aerosol specific precautions. Pre-COVID, anything requiring more than droplet precautions was simply handled with full-airborne precautions (negative pressure room, PAPR, etc).
Ideally, we'd have the airborne-precaution PPE for all COVID care but that's extremely expensive and leadership (hospital and gov't) have become aware that healthcare workers will still show up to work even without proper protection.
> To date, transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by this type of aerosol route has not been demonstrated; much more research is needed given the possible implications of such route of transmission.
That seems to be in direct opposition to your statement, correct? Or am I missing something.
The thing is -- why assume it can't form aerosols and that those aerosols aren't infectious? By demanding evidence for aerosol formation that is what they are stating. It makes no sense. Most viruses do form aerosols, and those aerosols do seem to be infectious.
By strict definition, aerosol is not airborne. The behaviors converge, but there is a technical difference. It's particularly important when it comes to designing effective filtering material and sanitization processes.
Yeah. And that's not 'airborne'.
Doctors are, and should be, some of the most elite minds and highly respected scientists/caregivers. Like any group, they have inter-group controversy and debate, but let's not use that to pile onto the anti-science, anti-vax, anti-medical chorus which is gaining steam on the internet. Some doctors get things wrong: most doctors, however, enact evidence-based practices which have been vetted by statisticians, chemists, and physicists who help innovate and inform medical decision-making.
As high-minded as our concerns about doctors being incorrect might be, let's keep a wide view here and not tear down a vast-majority noble and expert profession. Let's have a nuanced discussion where we admit doctors are both experts, highly select, but also people with flaws too.
Practically there is no way to hold a doctor accountable. There's various laws to limit liability and in most courts in the US you'll need another doctor to testify against your doctor. As the number of doctors is low they tend to know each other at least in passing, and it's hard to actually enforce professional standards.
What matters the most are practicing doctors, not doctors involved in research. I forget what the numbers are, but there are still more GPs and specialist than there are researching practitioners.
If you venture far outside a big city the quality of healthcare experiences a precipitous drop. It's terrifying. Even within a big city like New York, we found out that the ER/ICU professionals were killing people with ventilators! Why didn't they just supply oxygen instead, like they seem to be doing now?
Hyperbolic sycophantry like the above only exaserbates the ego and credentialism problems which already plague the medical profession. Respect is earned.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/07/01/research-d...
The chants "no justice, no peace"? "I can't breath"?
Those were clear chants. Everyone breathing on each other while chanting. Unencumbered by a mask.
Got a source on this? From the protests I've been attending, I'd say mask usage is easily at 99% of attendees. Everyone pictured in your linked article also has a mask, at least 10% have full masks and face shields.
it was a sight to see honestly and very heartening bit of community and mutual aid.
That hasn’t been my experience. Every action I’ve attended has had clear messaging leading up to it about masks and social distancing, and attendees have adhered to guidelines.
The crowds are tight and packed.
With a few hours of intense marching, people naturally want to remove/adjust/lower the mask to talk/shout/run. Even with those wearing their masks, their effectiveness won't be 100%.
Which leads back to the OP's point - if the virus is airborne, why don't we see an uptick in deaths for that demographic?
Because the 'participating demographic' skews young.
“We estimate that susceptibility to infection in individuals under 20 years of age is approximately half that of adults aged over 20 years, and that clinical symptoms manifest in 21% (95% credible interval: 12–31%) of infections in 10- to 19-year-olds”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0962-9 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Ag...
“We estimate that susceptibility to infection in individuals under 20 years of age is approximately half that of adults aged over 20 years, and that clinical symptoms manifest in 21% (95% credible interval: 12–31%) of infections in 10- to 19-year-olds”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0962-9
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Ag...
That aside, the Atlantic article talks about outside air diluting the virus. The Forbes article you linked also talks about this.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blm+protest+2020&iar=images&iax=im...
On the first row of images that appear for me, when following the sourced article, they are from the years:
2015, 2016, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020 (everyone in this picture has masks)
> Unencumbered by a mask.
The picture at the beginning of the article you linked shows every protester wearing a mask.
Also, the virus doesn't kill most people, the human immune (over)reaction does. This is my laymen's way of describing a (deadly) course of the virus and disease.
1.1. person breaths in microparticles (aerosols) contaminated with the virus 1.2. breaths in low or high dose (in further steps shown as L and H) 1.3. (L and H) directly deep into the lungs [1] (almost like intracellular viral infection)
2.1. (L and H) innate arm of immune system tries to combat it 2.2. (L and H) adaptive arm of immune system is being activated [2] (takes at most 7 days to mount a significant response) 2.3. (L) virus replicates slowly and is kept in check, because low dose is easier to combat by innate arm of immune system (availability of Vitamine D seems key as it exhibits direct antiviral activities [3] probably Zinc as well as it inhibits RNA replication of the virus [4]) 2.4. (H) virus replicates fast because the high dose can't be handled by the innate arm -> This is the point when most people will either get more ill and be hospitalized, or recover. This is also when it's too late for HCQ and Zinc to be effective. (Set of studies showing effectiveness for early or late treatment with HCQ + Zinc + Azithromycin[5]) 3.1. (L) virus is controlled and the innate arm of the immune system can handle the virus. The adaptive arm cleans up the last bits of the virus and person is no longer ill. -> Low dose infected person might stay Asymptomatic or experience a Light Cold or minor fever. 3.2. (H) virus is out of control and the adaptive arm reacts with an overreaction of the antibodies resulting in a cytokine storm 3.3. Person gets severe inflammation and thrombosis and gets heavily ill. -> High dose infection: this is the point of no return and anyone who reaches this is bound to have a long track of recovery in front of them, or death.
I've added some sources, be aware that for each source there's multitude of other sources claiming the same thing. Research yourself!
[1]: https://www.intechopen.com/books/rhinosinusitis/aerosol-part... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_immune_system#Functio... [3]: https://youtu.be/Mdc7T2UTHBI?t=216 [4]: https://youtu.be/WZq-K1wpur8?t=447 [5]: https://c19study.com/
Overwhelmingly the news has been negative.
The above doesn’t appear to include all of the research.
But if you know of missing studies please add them.
The disagreement of effectiveness is mostly about it being used in a late stage of the disease (as mentioned), not in early stage.
The fourth bullet point addresses this directly:
"The study’s lead author, Dhaval Dave of Bentley University, said, “In many cities, the protests actually seemed to lead to a net increase in social distancing, as more people who did not protest decided to stay off the streets.”"
'the Minneapolis Department of Health reported that more than 15,000 people were tested at centers set up in communities affected by the protests, and 1.7% of tests came back positive—below the statewide average of about 3.6%. According to the Washington Post, protest attendees in Minneapolis returned positivity rates of less than 1% and that “officials believe the low infection rates reflect that the protests were outside, that most people wore masks and that people spent most of their time in motion, circulating through the crowd.”'
I work at a biotech company that studies virus transmission and helps others study it. It was clear from the very beginning that transmission was airborne. Why would it not be? That the WHO and some doctors were assuming it was not seriously damages their credibility as healthcare professionals.
Current events should lead people to seriously question deference given to doctors. They need to be held accountable for their actions and must be made to listen to professionals in other fields.