Thread by @DrEricDing

Almost 1 year ago, Feb 26, 2020, authors wrote in a top journal that the coronavirus posed “limited threat outside of China” & “wearing mask in public does not prevent people from getting” #COVID19

➡️We should have listened to the actual aerosol scientists instead on masks! 🤦🏻‍♂️

2) This above JAMA short article and info graphic was widely read and cited in the media. jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

Meanwhile many in Asia — especially Japan 🇯🇵 South Korea 🇰🇷 and Taiwan 🇹🇼 (& China) recognized airborne transmission early because their aerosol experts led the way.

3) Meanwhile, a medical expert for all the top airlines in the world was quoted by Bloomberg to “forget face masks”. I highly doubt Dr David Powell of @IATA had any real expertise or experience in aerosol transmission or epidemiology.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1358282526998020096

4) Yes, some say the former Surgeon General and Fauci once said something similar, though they were a little different—they were mostly saying you don’t need to wear it yet / save it for healthcare workers, rather than it doesn’t work. Big difference. But lay media misinterpreted

5) I think we need to discuss how we find and cite experts. I have a doctorate in epidemiologist (plus a second one in nutrition), but I don’t pretend to know everything—and I don’t. I listen to expert but I keep my eyes open to diverse fields. Medicine doesn’t know aerosols...

6) Just like aerosol experts don’t know immunology. Immunologists are not the same as virologists, and some specialize in lab testing and some more in genetic evolution, and some specialize more in vaccine development. But virologists aren’t clinical trial epidemiologists....

7) And most of them certainly don’t know health policy & the inside-baseball politics. And so when it comes to certain areas of this pandemic, some know more than others, and many who might know CAN DISAGREE & DISAGREE IN RESPECTFUL (read: professional & non dismissive ways).

8) And even if someone does have expertise, they may not have their ears open or ears to the ground globally on different sources of data and information (not all good information is published in medical journals, and not all info published is good—see top post for example)...

9) Some info on internet is good, but a crap ton of info on the net is total junk and often dangerous conspiracy nonsense. All this makes the average lay public reader super confused. The media tries to do the best they can, but often they have tendency to turn to convenience...

10) Often media has the tendency to turn to their in-house medical experts, which for most medical issues they are great for, but other times not so much. Or they use whatever experts are pitched to them—sometimes good when it’s pitched from a university communications office...

11) But sometimes the media is pitched by PR gurus like paid publicists. And this is sometimes tricky, cuz we know that can be hit and miss. But they often get themselves on TV or media more. (I have not have one for any appearances, FYI). Infor is hard to distill for producers.

12) And sometimes the hardworking TV producers & writers might be sometimes misled by false narratives from a PR agent / publicist, or other even other scientists, who have vendettas to attack and denigrate others they disagree with.

13) One group of pandemic experts I rarely see on TV? Aerosol experts — who are traditionally environmental engineers who work in air pollution and climate change research — but also virus containing aerosols and design HEPA filters & upper air germicidal UV light to kill viruses

14) I did not personally know of any aerosol experts before the pandemic, but I have discovered people like @kprather88 @jljcolorado @ShellyMBoulder @CorsIAQ @Don_Milton @HuffmanLabDU @linseymarr @j_g_allen & others, to be incredibly humble, open minded & professionally modest...

15) But experts like them have been shouting since very start of #COVID19 outbreak that the **respiratory** virus was airborne. They know cuz they’ve studied it for years, while virologists (who are molecular biologists by training) have mostly not studied aerosols much at all.

16) Thus these aerosol scientists got frustrated because almost everyone in the media was mostly ignoring them and their aerosol warnings that #SARSCoV2 was airborne. thus penned a 239 person open letter to WHO and the world warning this finally in July—but 6 months too late 😢

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1279749506037317634

17) Late is better than never, but they weren’t heeded by the CDC (albeit muzzled by Trump WH/HHS as we know) until October 5th!!! That’s almost 9 months after the first can in the US in mid Jan! We lost 9 months of airborne warnings to the public!!! Damnit, that’s shameful.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1313178053997219840

18) And the shame and blame is not on one individual or one organization. It was on all of us from our insular media tendencies to grab whatever “Dr”happens to be available for a TV hit, to being naive about the dismissive attitudes of some in virology to aerosols (oh yes)...

19) ...to the general dismissive nature of anything that isn’t published but merely anecdotal (we knew from lots of reports in China and South Korea about asymptomatic transmission—before someone had any cough or sneeze—via again simple aerosol breathing), but were dismissed.

20) Someday there will need to be a 9-11 Commission on all of this in our reckoning of missteps, and I hope public policy experts like @kavitapmd and @ASlavitt and @AliNouriPhD who understand public policy more than any academic scientist, help lead it someday of what when wrong.

21) Ultimately, we need to prevent future pandemics, and the “infodemic” is not just right wing anti-mask misinfo, HCQ misinfo, Scott Atlas natural herd misinfo, but also our poor info filtering that led to all this tragedy of ignoring warning, dismissing masks, & airborne risks.

22) Some of you know why I feel so passionate on this, because it is so personal to me (and my family who suffered) from all the early harassment when i tried to warn a pandemic was coming. I’ll continue this another day, but we need to solve this. nymag.com/intelligencer/…

23) A sampling of headlines from Jan-March 2020 that supports my points above. A pandemic- a “thermonuclear level” one - was coming, yet so many people played it down and dismissed the risks. So frustrating.

24) And of course, the ultimate downplaying person was Trump. He was warned by his own NSC an ugly pandemic was coming and that the Coronavirus threat was real. Yet he did nothing. That was the most frustrating of all.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1353633413073432576