There is lots of interesting research being conducted about the way that this virus may be transmitted .
Somebody asked on Twitter about these studies , what does it all mean ?
The answer was , it means people are catching
COVID by inhaling the air that infected people exhale , so , don ’ t share the air .
Make sure you are wearing a good mask and ensure good ventilation of indoor spaces .” and the detection of the virus in smaller particles and also pointing to super-spreading events . In February 2021 , this conversation was ongoing , with a letter to the White House and to Anthony Fauci complaining about outdated terminology in terms of respiratory droplets and smaller inhalable respiratory particles , and suggesting that this artificial distinction should be replaced with more up-to-date terminology , although the up-to-date terminology was still what we would usually call contact large droplets and small aerosol particles , so it didn ’ t seem like it made a huge step forward in redefining our terms . There ’ s been a lot of ongoing ‘ discussion ’ since then with a similar level of incivility , with people pointing out biased droplet-dogma groupthink . Again , it involves a very complex and complicated understanding of respiratory viral transmission and people kept getting stuck in this dichotomy .”
Babcock pointed to the term ‘ jargon homonyms .’ “ This was a term brought forward by Dr . Ellie Murray that describes field-specific technical meanings that have a lot of implications within a specific field that are not always known or understood by people in different fields , and so the terminology may not be used in the same way .”
She pointed to a chart by Tang , et al . ( 2021 ) outlining the differences between clinicians , aerosol scientists and the general public in understanding airborne-related terminology . “ For many clinicians , ‘ airborne ’ implies long-distance transmission , like measles , and a requirement for specific kinds of PPE ,” Babcock explained . “ Whereas for aerosol scientists , ‘ airborne ’ largely means traveling through the air , and the general public largely agrees that ‘ airborne ’ means things travel through the air . ‘ Aerosols ’ for clinicians usually means very small particles , again associated with aerosol-generating procedures and specific types of PPE . For scientists , it ’ s any collection of particles of any state – solid or liquid — and the general public may think of aerosols primarily as hairspray or other aerosol products . In clinical work , droplets are usually thought of as larger particles that fall to the air relatively quickly within 3 feet to 6 feet from someone , and again are tied to specific PPE recommendations . But for aerosol scientists , this may mostly mean just a liquid particle , and for the general public , it might just mean what comes out of an eyedropper . It can get even more esoteric with droplet nuclei — the residue of a droplet that is evaporated to being very small and is a similar term for clinicians to aerosol , and it ’ s something that the public has generally not heard of , as particles are really just anything in the air to them . But in healthcare , we tend to think of them as the actual virion . In some conversations , these competing aerosol definitions complicate discussions around what is an aerosol-generating procedure .”
Babcock continued , “ For most infection preventionists , epidemiologists , and infectious disease physicians , the definition of an aerosol-generating procedure was something that somehow changed the size or dispersal of particles during specific procedures that would then lead to a change in a PPE recommendation . So , for example , an invasive procedure on the airway might lead to smaller particles being generated that could carry infectious viral particles , and therefore we would need to switch from isolation masks to respirators . Some of the work that I had done with colleagues was looking at whether when you saw an increase in viral particles during a procedure , such as a bronchoscopy , did you actually see a shift in the size of those particles ; in general , we found that that we did not . But others see aerosol-generating procedures as anything that increases the particle number , and therefore in studies that looked at the numbers of particles generated during different activities , could show that talking and exercise could actually get you to as high particle numbers as some of these respiratory therapies that we considered aerosol-generating procedures . Also , we had discussions about what droplets were and not all of those conversations would recognize that droplets do not behave the same way all the time and so the force of emission , ventilation , and exposure time all have an impact in the size of the particles that we refer to as droplets and how they behave , how far they spread through the air , and how far they may be able to arrange to cause infection at a distance .”
Babcock alluded to her “ strong distaste for all-ornothing arguments .” She explained , “ If you won ’ t call it airborne , then you don ’ t care about transmission , and you ’ re not interested in protecting the public or healthcare workers . And similarly , if you keep saying it ’ s only droplet that you don ’ t think there ’ s any role for ventilation , you think indoors and outdoors is the same level of risk , and you lose these complexities . And losing those complexities sort of prioritized vocabulary over prevention strategies . There are lots of interesting research being conducted about the way that this virus may be transmitted . Somebody asked on Twitter about these studies , what does it all mean ? The answer was , it means people are catching COVID by inhaling the air that infected people exhale , so , don ’ t share the air . Make sure you are wearing a good mask and ensure good ventilation of indoor spaces . These are essentially the same recommendations that all of us have been making the whole time , so we ’ re getting bogged down in this vocabulary . But the recommendations are in fact pretty much the same . Don ’ t breathe in air that someone else just breathed out . Try to protect yourself from that by wearing a good mask and be in a space that isn ’ t super crowded and poorly ventilated . We ’ ve learned a lot about different strategies to understand better how viruses are transmitted through the air , and therefore how to prevent them . We ’ ve learned that false dichotomies don ’ t necessarily lend themselves to a deeper understanding of the implications of what we need to do to keep ourselves and others safe , so when people pointed to evidence of spread of more than one to two meters , it does not always mean that the particle sizes are very , very small . We