Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Asit Profile picture
@akm5376
Apr 2, 2021 • 47 tweets • 17 min read • Read on X
What do we mean by #UseAirbornePrecautions? There are clear guidelines in health care settings, but what do we mean by it for the public? A 🧵 of 🧵(met-thread) on this. Strap in, this will be long 1/
2) First, this is not the first #airborne problem we have faced, and it won't be the last. And not all of them are exotic pathogens. Some could be as mundane as dust, smoke, pollens, volatile/semi-volatile organic compounds. They are all around our living space
3) Not all #airborne troubles are created equal. For example, I am a lot more allergic to cigarette smoke than incense. This varies from person to person and trouble to trouble. Some do not have any smell and can still be a "headache".
4) And we try to deal with these problems as best as we can. Since most of our life is spent inside buildings, we try to design buildings that can minimize exposure of occupants to a myriad of #airborne troubles
5) When there is trouble in the air, you try to focus on the air, not the surfaces, not the water
6) That is because your lungs are like over 3000 hands touching the surrounding air all the time... (h/t @Orla_Hegarty, @mdc_martinus)
7) So, there are some standard steps we would take to deal with something in the air:
1⃣Source elimination
2⃣Source control
3⃣Ventilation
4⃣Filtration/treatment
8) Source elimination is age-old wisdom.
“If there is a pile of manure in a space, do not try to remove the odor by ventilation. Remove the pile of manure.” Max von Pettenkofer, 1858
9) In this case, the source is an infectious person. Eliminate sounds kind of harsh, but the aim is that we try to not have infectious persons in enclosed spaces. This is difficult with the pre-/a-symptomatic spread
jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman…
pnas.org/content/117/30…
10) So, we need rapid testing and easy access to testing
11) And, people should not be insecure to stay home if they are not feeling well - not financially insecure for lost wages or socially insecure for stigmatization
12) Source control - masking and better masks are the best way to achieve this.
13) Once the cat is out of the bag or the virus is out of the human, there is only so much we can do. So, if we can control at source, that is one of the most effective ways to manage it.
And here is a fancy animation showing how masks work nytimes.com/interactive/20…
14) And for the last time, masks are not sieves. They have more than one way of filtering particles.
15) And because the darn thing is #airborne, mask fit and mask quality matters. You are not just trying to get rid of some fat a** droplets
16) Masks can be leaky, even nice surgical ones
17) And so, mask fit matters
18) Well, once the cat is out of the bag, you would have to resort to handling it somehow. One of the manners is #ventilation and #dilution
19) Distancing works not just because all the good droplets know to drop off after 2 m as if there is an invisible barrier. It works because #aerosol concentration reduces with distance, quite quickly
20) It is obvious that concentration would be highest at the source. And farther you go from the source, concentration starts to fall. So, a distancing of 2 m can be way better than 1 m.
21) But indoors, in a space where you are sharing air with others, there is no way to entirely escape the exhaled breath of others - no distance makes you absolutely safe. Exhalation from people is going to gradually fill up the space, unless it is #ventilated
22) In case you are a more visual person than me, this is for you - english.elpais.com/society/2020-1…
23) Ventilation is the introduction of "clean" air into the space. In this case, "clean" means it is devoid of virus containing particles.
24) #Ventilation could be as simple as opening a window, or a door, or both.
Want to know some hacks for #AirHygiene? Here are few easy to use ones - covidstraighttalk.org/hacks
25) How do you know if you have enough ventilation? A simple indicator - and it has its flaws but for now, it is possibly the best we have - is measuring carbon dioxide levels in the space
26) Unfortunately, poor ventilation is an old foe that plagued many of our buildings from before the pandemic, and it has made matters worse during this pandemic. Here is Prof. Corsi explaining it for classrooms
27) And again, Prof. Corsi has an elegant explanation of how simple and how profitable it could be to improve ventilation in classrooms
28) And here is a global collection of messaging telling you to let #FreshAir in
29) Sometimes though, due to system limitations, outdoor weather, outdoor pollution, #FreshAir may not be a possibility
That is when we turn to air cleaning/treatment
30) A thread from Prof. Jimenez, exploring all aspects of air cleaning
31) A thread from Prof. Corsi proving the point that equipping every classroom with a HEPA based air cleaner is just a good long term investment
32) And beware of snake oil salespersons when it comes to air cleaners. Go for simple HEPA/filtration based air cleaners instead of fancy sounding "air purifiers"
33) By the way, just because unscrupulous people will try to sell snake oil and take advantage of the situation is no reason for us not to admit the thing is #airborne and nothing is stopping s from trying to educate the public.
34) And here are some guides that compile and complement all the steps mentioned so far for mitigating risks in real life situations -
Prof. Huffman on gatherings
35) @healthyheating on creating a temporary isolation room at home for infected persons, intended to keep other family members safer
healthyheating.com/2021.COVID.Res…
36) Some hacks for improving your mask fit
fixthemask.com
making.engr.wisc.edu/mask-fitter/
37) And hacks for making your own air cleaners - The Corsi-Rosenthal box
texairfilters.com/a-variation-on…
38) A thread on ventilation and air cleaning advice from the @WHO itself.
38) To conclude, it is a patently fixable problem once we admit to the kind of problem we have. Admitting it is #airborne is not scary, it is not alarming. It is just living in the reality we already are.
39) And the fixes are not necessarily costly or complicated.
We need to educate people, not try to pretend to "protect" them. And admission will be the first step towards the goal of #ZeroCovid
\to be supplemented as needed
\not ending 😀
40) In case you encounter folks touting situational #Airborne, advise them on the difference between situational and normal
41) #Airborne precautions - a visual flow path for you.
42) An excellent summarization from Dr.@ashishkjha on the implications and what we need to pay attention to 👇
43) My attempt at graphically summarizing the points of the excellent @TheLancet article which seems to have triggered the break of a dam!
44) A 🧵 trying to summarize the @WHO roadmap for ventilation
45) A comprehensive thread from Prof. Jimenez @jljcolorado, delving into the history of droplets and aerosols. This gives you a unique insight into why we landed up in this hot mess
46) A thread looking at recent messaging from Govt. of India on mitigation -

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Asit

Asit Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @akm5376

Asit Profile picture
Jan 9, 2023
popsci.com/health/survivo… A thread on long term impacts of polio for the survivors.
TLDR: Post polio syndrome warns us of what post covid/long covid could look like in the years to come. 1/
Polio, a dreaded disease during the 1940s, 1950s is a distant memory for most of us now. "By the 1940s and early 50s, the polio terror was killing or paralyzing more than a half million people globally each year."
2/
In mid 1950s, highly effective vaccines came out, eradicating the disease from entire countries - this was a high point for public health 3/
Read 20 tweets
Asit Profile picture
Jul 13, 2022
#PollensAreAirborne
Average pollen size 25 microns, i.e., about 125 times larger than respiratory aerosols carrying pathogens.
He investigated over 80 types of pollens, concluding grasses caused the greatest reaction. He was in correspondence with Darwin:
Darwin asked if there is a difference between plants that pollinate by wind and those that pollinate by insects.
Can pollen be carried large distances in the upper regions of the atmosphere? Blackley wrote on 7 July 1873: "his experiments ... inspired by Darwin’s ... collecting atmospheric dust at Porto Praya"
darwinproject.ac.uk/humannature/20…
Read 7 tweets
Asit Profile picture
Jun 25, 2022
A 🧵on mitigating against heatstrokes, especially during heatwaves but generically, during the entirety of summers.
This is based on a bit of my experience of 25+ Indian summers and a bit of my research background 1/
Locations previously unacquainted with hot summers now have to face them. And in the tropics, you have longer periods of high temperatures. Both things can be scary when it comes to a heat stroke. 2/
A very basic thing, but bears repeating. Hydrate. And carry a bottle of water, since you never know when thirst might strike. 3/
Read 29 tweets
Asit Profile picture
Apr 19, 2022
[nature.com/articles/d4158…](nature.com/articles/d4158…)

****Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne****
In short: hubris, conservative thinking, group thinking, and the group defending its own. A 🧵 on the Nature article 1/
2. WHO categorically tweeted in March 2020, “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne,” - shouting out how sure they were about the statement
3. Their recco based on decades-old infection-control teachings. Also included one metre distancing and handwashing and surface disinfection. In the last 6 decades, their understanding of respiratory infections has not evolved
Read 29 tweets
Asit Profile picture
Apr 11, 2022
The obsession with returning to "normal" has more to do with collective inertia than any love for "normalcy".
What was so special about the normal we want to return to? And in our fetish for a return, we missed so many opportunities of making things better. A dynamic thread 🧵1/
2/ Flushing toilets is a significant aerosol generating process. The pandemic should have opened our eyes to this. Just put the lid down when flushing, even at your own home. Even if those are your germs, do you really want them all through the home?
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toil…
3/ Outdoor dinning - weather permitting and sometimes, even when weather not exactly permitting. We know how to make ourselves locally warm. All it needed was focus and some investment. Some took the initiative, but largely, we seem to be okay with eating inside stuffy rooms 🙄
Read 6 tweets
Asit Profile picture
Jan 27, 2022
One more attempt at making a visual engagement for emphasizing the importance of better masks. This effort was led and culminated by @Its_Airborne - I am too lazy otherwise.
What started with a thread, is now interactive:
bettermasks.its-airborne.org
This is a schema intended for two purposes -
1) To give a visual depiction of how much better respirators can be than cloth or surgical masks due to their better fit and filtration.
2) To give a feeling of how things have changed with variants. For example, is cloth masks on everyone gave a certain level of protection with the wild variant, with omicron, you may now need surgical masks with fit adjusters for the same level of protection.
Read 16 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(