Thread by @jljcolorado

1/ A great paper by @trishgreenhalgh explaining the debate over airborne transmission during the pandemic.

Although airborne transmission is the only important mode of transmission, it was ignored by @WHO and the Public Health establishment. This paper explains why & how.

https://twitter.com/trishgreenhalgh/status/1396842078504726529

2/ "Political and policy actors at international, national, and regional level aligned—predominantly though not invariably—with medical scientific orthodoxy which promoted the droplet theory of transmission and considered aerosol transmission unproven or of doubtful relevance."

3/ "This dominant scientific sub-field centred around the clinical discipline of infectious disease control, in which leading actors were hospital clinicians aligned with the evidence-based medicine movement."

4/ "Aerosol scientists—typically, chemists, and engineers—representing the heterodoxy were systematically excluded from key decision-making networks and committees."

5/ "Dominant discourses defined these [aerosol] scientists’ ideas and methodologies as weak, their empirical findings as untrustworthy or insignificant, and their contributions to debate as unhelpful."

6/ And this is a thread from Aug. 2020, where I tried to plead for a seat at the table, and for our aerosol expertise to be recognized as relevant to COVID-19 transmission. [It was mostly ignored]

https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1295518786951319552