SARS-CoV-2 transmits better to people nearby because aerosols are most concentrated there. And then it can transmit in a room, if we "help it" w/ low ventilation, long time etc.
3/ If it can infect in a room, it MUST infect much more easily in close proximity, where it is ~50-100 times more concentrated than in room air.
Just like smoke (an aerosol), which is far more concentrated in close proximity than at the room level.
4/ And then, droplets are NOT needed at all to explain the patterns of transmission. We can explain everything with aerosols.
Which is consistent with almost no evidence for droplets, and a ton of evidence for aerosols:
5/ But to see a high level person like @DrTomFrieden say that there is a consensus that aerosols is not important, in matters (transport through the air) where a primary discipline is aerosol science, makes us feel again very welcome into this debate...
(Cartoon thx to @DFisman)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
1/ New paper in @ScienceMagazine: "Mandating Indoor Air Quality for Public Buildings"
Explaining current status of indoor air quality standards (in short: bad or non-existent), the huge health benefits that would arise from them & proposing a path forward science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
2/ "People living in urban & industrialized societies, which are expanding globally, spend more than 90% of time indoors, breathing indoor air (IA)."
"Most countries do NOT have legislated indoor air quality (IAQ) performance standards for public spaces"
1/ Measuring CO2 indoors in a 10 day trip from US to Europe & back
Bus @RideRTD to Denver airport, poorly ventilated as usual.
We have not left town yet! In previous trips it kept increasing, we'll see this time.
2/ For background on what CO2 indoors indicates and more details, see
TLDR:
- We exhale 40000 ppm CO2
- Outdoors: 420
- Each 400 extra ppm indoors = 1% extra rebreathed air
- CO2 makes us dumber, indicator of virus & pollutants. Does not capture filteringdocs.google.com/document/d/e/2…
3/ Or by reducing recirculation. Some recirculation is ok if well-filtered, saves energy.
Energy-recovery ventilators allow ventilating well with limited energy use.